


Two by Two

by Doomsteady



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Deus Ex Mycroft, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mistakes, Peril
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 10:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 37,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11355501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doomsteady/pseuds/Doomsteady
Summary: At the tail end of their latest case, Sherlock drags John with him onto a luxury cruise ship in pursuit of the man responsible for the crime. The only problem? John is hydrophobic. When Sherlock discovers this, his misguided efforts to help John overcome the problem soon land them both in hot water.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A_Candle_For_Sherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/gifts).



> A simple prompt by **the-moon-loves-the-sea** (AKA **[a-candle-for-sherlock](http://a-candle-for-sherlock.tumblr.com/)** ) about Sherlock teaching John to swim that sort of... got a bit out of hand.
> 
> Massive thanks and hugs to [Maddy Ray](https://madviolin321.tumblr.com) for beta-reading this fic. Her feedback and advice was invaluable, and truly pushed this towards being some of my best writing ever. I couldn't have done it without you!

“It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.” — _John Locke_

 

*******

 

John Watson wakes at least once a week from a nightmare that leaves his skin clammy and his heart hammering beneath his ribs. The subject of his dreams rarely differs: He’s pinned down in an abandoned stone building, gunfire piercing the air. Bullets zip past his ears through the empty windows as his squadmates lie dying in the streets.

Their blood-curdling cries force him out and into the line of fire. He can’t leave his friends behind.

Before he can reach them, he feels the punch of a sniper’s kiss in his shoulder. Colour bleeds from the scene as his life spills from the wound, and the world turns grey save for the blood painting his arm red all the way down to the very tips of his fingers. It’s more a memory than a dream, until another screaming bullet punctures his chest and stops his heart dead.

But sometimes he dreams of a different trauma. Something much older, buried deeper in his subconscious. He doesn’t fully remember what happened, he was too young. He only knows the lingering effect it had on his psyche. He was nine at the time, and his young mind did a good job at shielding him from the full horror of it, he supposes. But sometimes, when the night is dark and the air is still, flickers of light and sound drift to the surface of his dreams. He feels the violent roll of the deck beneath him, smells the thick, rain-whipped sea air in his nostrils. He hears his father’s voice sending a panicked mayday on the radio.

He doesn’t remember seeing his mother get tossed overboard by the storm. But sometimes he hears her scream piercing through the howl of the wind, and those are the nights he wakes shaking and gasping for air.


	2. Chapter 2

John hustles inside and scuffs his boots on the well-worn mat. “Christ, what a night.”

“What a case,” Sherlock agrees, swinging the front door shut behind them. He unwinds the scarf from his long neck and tosses it over a hook on the wall.

“Can’t wait to put my feet up,” John says, shucking his coat. “I expect even you’ll be wanting a kip after all this, eh?”

Sherlock pulls out his phone and peers at the screen, frowning briefly before stuffing it back into his pocket. He spins around, bringing his gloved hands together with an exuberant clap. “Pack a suitcase, John,” he announces, “we’re going to Menorca.”

Before John can even process the instruction he takes off up the stairs, leaving John standing alone in the hallway with his coat hanging uselessly off one arm.

"Right. Going to be one of _those_ nights, I 'spose."

John trots up the stairs, finding the flat mostly unlit save for whichever switches Sherlock bothered to flick on his way to the bathroom. John watches the play of his shadow in the open doorway. “Alright, we’re going to Menorca,” he says, skipping the argument and going straight to the part where he gives in and just goes with it; life with Sherlock, in a nutshell. “May I ask why?”

Sherlock sweeps past him with an armful of toiletries. The door to his bedroom flies open and he dumps the pile unceremoniously onto the bed. “You know why,” he replies.

“That’s not very helpful,” John says, leaning against the doorframe to watch him. Sherlock flicks the bedside lamp on and stoops to reach underneath the bed, pulling out a black travel suitcase. He tugs the zipper open in one smooth motion and begins packing items inside.

“I don’t like loose ends.”

“What loose ends? You mean the kidnapper? What was his name— Mikhail something?”

“Petrov, yes. And he’s a trafficker, John. Not a _kidnapper_.”

“Right.” Snippets of the past few hours play themselves back in John's ears, a white noise of Sherlock arguing with half the Met about some detail he seemed to think was being overlooked whilst everybody else seemed happy to call the case closed. Including John. He shakes his head in confusion. “Wait. I thought we were letting the Spanish police handle him? He’s not operating out of London anymore. As Lestrade would say, ' _not our division_.'”

Sherlock gives a long-suffering sigh. “They can’t ‘handle him.’ Weren’t you paying attention earlier?”

“I may have zoned out for a bit,” he admits, earning him a wan look. Sherlock strides into the living room, his keen green-gold eyes flicking about in search of something.

Compared to John — or anybody John’s ever met above the age of five, anyway — Sherlock is an indefatigable ball of energy. It’s both the most incredible and frustrating thing about him. In the downtime between cases he can be the laziest sod John’s ever known, but otherwise the man never appears to stop moving, a perpetual motion machine that seems to exert more energy than he remembers to consume. Even now, his hands are a blur as they rifle through piles of clutter and boxes of old case material. John can’t help but admire and even envy the seemingly endless drive and inexhaustible brilliance of his mind.

But it can be a worry. Sherlock is prone to ignoring the basic needs of his own body. He's not _actually_ a perpetual motion machine, and he’s come close to the breaking point a few times over the years since John has known him. There was one night in late August, his first year in Baker Street, when John came home to find Sherlock unconscious on the kitchen floor. There was a broken beaker of some dubious chemical by his feet, and John initially thought he’d poisoned himself by accident. It only became apparent later on that he’d gone such a long time without drinking anything that he’d become dangerously hypoglycemic. Damn fool almost slipped into a coma. John had to watch his eating habits like a babysitter for weeks, and still has to remind him often to eat and drink.

Recalling it sends a chill across his skin. What if John had come home an hour later? Or stayed at his girlfriend’s flat for the night? Between the neglect of his body and his dangerous chemical experiments, it’s a miracle Sherlock ever made it to adulthood without constant supervision. Then again, perhaps he did; the history of his and Mycroft’s upbringing are something John has never quite been brave enough to delve into.

As far as babysitting goes he’d better make the most of their reprieve while it lasts, because Sherlock seems intent on them jetting off to another continent and there's no point in arguing. They haven’t been home in days and his feet are blistered, arse sore from hours sat on hard plastic chairs down at the police station. Two weeks is a long time for any case, but especially one having involved mad chases across half of Europe on the tail of a missing girl. It was one long race against time until they finally brought her home safe and sound.

Really, re should've known better than to think that would be the end of it.

He shuffles into the kitchen and flicks the light on, squinting at the sudden brightness. “Go on, then,” he calls over his shoulder, filling the kettle and setting it to boil. “Why us? Why do we have to do it?”

There’s a flutter of noise like bird’s wings as letters and case files spill onto the living room floor. “They’re refusing to provide assistance on the grounds that we don’t have a positive ID.”

“We do, though.”

“We have a description and a name, thanks to the testimony given by victim. Enough for me to be going on with, certainly. But they don’t want to make any arrests without what they classify as ‘solid proof.’”

“That’s barmy.” The kettle clicks off. John goes through the motions, squishing the teabags around in the water a little more forcefully than necessary. “So they’ll happily let a known kidnapper carry on operating in their country, rather than risk bringing the wrong bloke in? What sense does that make?”

Sherlock makes a pleased sound in his throat and straightens up. He enters the kitchen, a dog-eared passport twirling between his fingers. “Who knows what goes on in the minds of most police detectives, John. Very little, I imagine. That's why we do this.”

John snorts. “Feels like we’re the entire bloody force, at times. I’m starting to understand why you never sit down for more than five minutes. Nothing would get done, otherwise.”

Sherlock hums affirmatively, reaching for his cup. John hands it over. Their fingers brush accidentally, or as accidental as it can be when it happens so often. He's never asked. Sherlock just has long fingers, that's all. Good for playing violin, awkward for the passing of beverages between friends. They sip in silence for a few minutes, John allowing the hot liquid to ease some of the tension that’s been building up in his muscles over the course of the night. Even Sherlock’s rigid posture visibly relaxes, his forehead smoothing out beneath an errant, wind-swept curl of hair.

He does look tired, John thinks. Not half as tired as John himself feels, but it says something that Sherlock lacks the energy to even fully conceal his fatigue. The dark circles under his eyes add years to his impossibly youthful face, making him look gaunt and harsh under the pale flourescent light in the kitchen. When this is all done, he should find a way to bribe a full night's rest out of him.

But first, they’re going to Menorca. Great. All told, he can think of far worse places Sherlock might have wanted to drag him off to. It’ll be hot this time of year, and God knows he needs to get away from London for a while. It’s been far, far too long since he last went abroad. His complexion is slowly coming to resemble Sherlock’s own pasty white skin from months of perpetually overcast English weather. Even if they’ll be going for casework, there should be enough downtime to relax for a bit and soak up the atmosphere. The more he considers it, the more appealing it becomes. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, visualising sunny days, starlight nights, and somewhere in the middle of it all the pair of them in shorts and sunglasses, chasing a criminal past posh villas and down cobbled roads.

“What are you smiling about?” Sherlock asks, bemused.

He chuckles. “Nothing, I’ve just always wondered what you’d look like with a tan.”

Sherlock looks aghast. “I will absolutely _not_ be getting a tan.”

“Oh, you will,” he teases, grinning into his cup. “Unless you plan to spend every minute in the shade. Spanish summers can be pretty intense.”

“It won’t be that sunny. It’s not even July.”

“Sherlock, do you know anything about Spain?”

Sherlock lifts his cup to his lips. “I know its geographic location,” he mumbles. He takes a long sip. “I’ll have sunblock.”

John laughs so hard that he nearly spills his tea. Oh, this is going to be good. He should snap a photo of a tanned Sherlock for posterity. Or possibly blackmail; the kitchen is overdue for a good cleaning. “So where are we going, Mahon? Ciutadella?" he asks, reigning in his amusement. "Do we know where this bloke is hiding?”

Sherlock plucks a glossy brochure from the table and waves it between two fingers. “A luxury cruise ship: The MV Aurora.”

A luxury cruise ship. A _ship_. John’s brain skips its tracks. Seconds later, a brittle crash at his feet startles him, and he glances down and sees hot, brown liquid pooling around his shoes.

“John?” Sherlock touches his shoulder, his eyes pinched with worry. “Are you alright?”

Heat rushes to his face. He grabs a towel from the counter and crouches to wipe up the mess before it can trickle underneath the oven. A curse slips out under his breath. “Dunno how that happened,” he says, huffing an embarrassed laugh. “Just sort of slipped—”

A hand catches his wrist mid-sweep and they both see the tremor in his limb. John pulls away. “I’m fine, honest.”

Confusion clouds Sherlock's eyes for a second, but he blinks it away. Flustered, John turns his attentions back to the wet floor. He’d rather not guess what deductions are racing through Sherlock's mind right now. That was clearly a panic attack, but he hasn't had one like that in years.

Sherlock clears his throat. “You should head to bed,” he says, as if he didn’t just witness John spontaneously throw his favourite cup on the floor. “We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”

 _Oh, God._ John rises to his feet so fast it makes him dizzy. He cringes, sucking air through his teeth. “Tomorrow? Sorry, I can’t go. I’m totally swamped this week. The surgery is understaffed and I’ve been filling in for someone on maternity leave.” He turns to the sink, wringing out the tea-soaked cloth over the drain. Any excuse to hide his face, though Sherlock can still probably tell the lie for what it is just by the tone of his voice.

“They can manage.”

“And Mrs Hudson asked me to fix her bathroom window. Well, she didn’t ask, really, but she mentioned it and I offered to help. Promised to. You won’t need me there, anyway. What good could I do? I’ll only slow you down. You’ll be alright on your own, won’t you? I mean, you’ll be working with Security on the ship, yes?”

His heart is pounding beneath his ribs and he can’t seem to stop, the excuses spilling out of him uncontrollably. When he turns back around, Sherlock is staring at him wide-eyed, mouth hanging slightly ajar.

There’s a feat worthy of a front-page news spread: ‘ _Historic Moment as Sherlock Holmes Stunned into Silence._ ’ Under any other circumstance, he might feel oddly proud at the achievement. But any moment now the penny will drop and Sherlock will put two and two together. He braces for the moment Sherlock's sharp eyes will light up with realisation and he'll exclaim, ‘ _Oh!_ ’ and launch into a deductive soliloquy leading him straight into the inevitable, humiliating conclusion. Because it’s bound to happen, isn’t it? Nothing gets past Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes.

Not that it would take a Holmes to figure this one out. He’s made it obvious enough, even without teacup shards scattered about the floor like an exploded firework. The mere thought of stepping foot on a cruise ship sends a shiver through him that he can’t suppress, and _fuck_ , there’s another clue Sherlock had to have noticed. He’s probably picking apart every tiny movement John makes. It's making him paranoid. He crouches back down to the floor, huddling between the protective shield of his knees.

Sherlock looms over him like a shadow. “You don’t want to go.”

It's an accusation. True to form, Sherlock’s quicksilver mind has flipped from confusion to cold suspicion like the flicking of a light switch. John tries for apologetic nonchalance as he carefully picks the shards of his teacup off the floor, gathering them in the palm of his other hand. “I’d love to go, Sherlock. I really would. But I do have a lot to be getting on with here, unfortunately.”

Sherlock’s dark head hovers above him, heavy with thought like a storm cloud ready to burst, and John steels himself for an onslaught of cutting truths. But the downpour doesn’t arrive. Sherlock is oddly quiet as he finishes gathering the debris and tips it into the bin, all too conscious of his being watched far too closely.

Is it too much to hope that he hasn’t figured it out? It doesn’t seem possible. But if so, he’ll take it. Gladly.

The floor is still wet, but John's knees are aching and Sherlock’s scrutiny is reaching unbearable levels. He needs to retreat, otherwise he’ll just end up blurting it out himself to break the tension. He heads for the stairs up, brushing past Sherlock whose stern gaze is still fixed to the floor. As he reaches the first step, Sherlock speaks. “You’re right, I should turn in. I’ll wash this properly later. Good luck on the boat.”

“No.”

John halts, fingers curled tightly around the banister. “No?”

“No, I won’t be working with security,” Sherlock explains. “Too risky. Word travels quickly through a ship’s crew, even one of the Aurora’s considerable size. I can’t afford to give him forewarning of my presence. I’ll wait for him to make a move on somebody, then catch him in the act.”

Surely he’s kidding. John twists to look over his shoulder. “You’re serious. You're still going.”

Sherlock’s expression is a picture of nonchalance as he cradles his cup of tea to his chest. He could win tournaments with a poker-face that good. “Of course I’m serious. It may be a little more difficult without backup, but the basic premise of the plan remains viable. If all goes to plan, I should be done before the week is over.”

John’s grip on the banister tightens. He doesn't like the sound of any of that. Alone, no backup, not even from the crew. And he expects to take down a dangerous criminal who, by the victim's own testimony, is probably twice his weight in muscle-mass alone? Turning back towards the stairs, he swallows thickly, ignoring the rising anxiety in his gut. Against all better judgement, he gives a nod. “Fine," he says. "I’ll pack.”


	3. Chapter 3

Somewhere over the English channel, John flops back down into his aisle seat and releases a huff of hot air. “Typical. Five minutes after takeoff and there’s already a queue for the loo.” He throws his head back and addresses the seat controls above him. “Why did I agree to this?”

Sherlock turns from the cabin window to peer at him. John rubs the pads of his fingertips back and forth beneath his baggy eyes, stretching and crinkling the sun-worn skin underneath in a movement that he finds oddly hypnotic. He watches, fascinated by John's unique ability to appear worn and aged beyond his years, a truly masterful non-verbal exagerration that is the centrepiece to his complaint that Sherlock doesn't let him get enough sleep. It's ridiculous. He got less sleep in the military than he does now. He debates internally whether or not John would be angry if he pulled out his phone and took a candid picture. With further study, he could base an entire disguise around it. But John hasn’t been in a particularly genial mood all morning, so he decides to stick to mental snapshots only. Which is fine, really, considering he cleared out an entire wing of his Mind Palace months ago for the sole purpose of cataloguing All Things John Watson.

“I’m not sure,” he says, studying the perfect line made by John’s thin, pressed lips. “You seemed adamant about not coming along. Then you changed your mind, all of your own accord.” He lifts a shoulder. “It is a mystery.”

John scoffs. “No, I think you know why. You probably had this all planned days ago.”

He frowns, confused. “Had what planned?”

“This,” he says, waving a hand between them.

“I have no idea what you mean.”

John looks at him, eyebrows raised. “Sherlock, you may not realise this, but ordinary people like me need things like sleep. And food. And you need those things too, even if you do apparently have an almost superhuman ability to ignore it until you collapse into a bloody coma. I’m not you, I don’t have that kind of endurance. I’m sorry, but a week without sleep is beyond my tolerance.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “That’s an egregious exaggeration, John. It’s been closer to four days. Not a _week_. That’s well within acceptable health standards. Human beings can survive up to two weeks without serious long-term side-effects; that’s a fact pulled straight from one of your own medical textbooks, by the way. Honestly, your proclivity towards time-wasting activities like sleep borders on unabashed gluttony.”

John throws up his hands to argue, but Sherlock interrupts before he can get a word in. “You had ample time to get some hours in last night. It isn’t my fault you chose instead to spend most of that time restlessly pacing about your room for some unfathomable reason—”

“I was _packing_!” he exclaims.

“—Point being, how could I have planned that? You chose to come along, John. And while I'm happy that you did, that's on you.”

“Right,” John cuts in sharply, “And what choice did I have? You don't even feed yourself properly. I wasn't about to let you go running off and getting yourself killed because you have the survival instinct of a lemming, and you knew that damn well. You realise this is pretty much blackmail, what you're doing.”

“Blackmail?”

“’Come and chase this dangerous kidnapper around on his big boat, or kiss the Posh Boy goodbye!’”

“’ _Posh Boy_?!'" he exclaims, a little louder than intended in the quiet cabin. What does that even mean? Is that John's nickname for him, or something he picked up from Lestrade's crew of braying hyenas? He leans closer, hushing his voice. “First of all, that makes absolutely no sense. I am not _posh_.” He sits up, straightening the cuffs of his blazer. “And secondly, whilst I won’t deny your military skills come as a considerable boon to the Work, I am quite capable of handling most things myself. I did before.”

The noise John makes rises somewhere between a bark and a laugh. “Sherlock, there is no way I was going to let you run headlong into this on your own, and you know it. In fact, I think you said it deliberately, just so I would change my mind. I’m getting wise to your tricks,” he says, waggling a finger under his nose. Sherlock bats it away.

"You have no proof. The court rejects your accusation and moves to dismiss this whole conversation."

Annoyingly, he’s not wrong.

John can be keyed-in at the least convenient moments. To be fair to him, it can be wonderfully, dazzlingly useful at times, and Sherlock has come to rely on him more than he’d ever thought possible in the short time they've lived and worked together. Through his eyes, Sherlock’s beam of deductive prowess focuses down to a blinding edge that burn through the darkest of mysteries, and at the heights of their synergy it is truly a thing of beauty. John may not be the most observant man himself, but something about him excites a greater urge in Sherlock to prove his worth, something that no other person has motivated him to do. The analogy of a peacock spreading his tail feathers to impress a mate creeps into his mind like a weed, but again, it's a nonsense thought. He's not _courting_ John. And even if he was, John isn't interested in anything more than friendship. Which is fine, he doesn't lose sleep over it. Not often.

And nevertheless there is a nugget of truth in the fact that his preening and posturing is largely for the sake of watching John's dazzled reaction. His awed utterances of 'brilliant' and 'amazing', as often as they come, never grew old. Not the way he says it. Not when everything Sherlock does to impress him has the same full effect, as if John could no less grow tired of being amazed by Sherlock as Sherlock is of amazing him.

Other times, however, his random peaks of perceptiveness can be a royal pain in the arse. Like right now. Their roles appear to have reversed; John is being entirely too perceptive, and Sherlock is failing to see something that should be blindingly obvious. It's unnerving; he isn't used to second-guessing himself. It seems they’ve arrived at a stalemate, and John’s dour mood is spreading to him like some infectious tropical disease. He can’t think like this, plagued by uncertainty and increasingly concerned about the impact this might have on their mission.

He’d hoped not to resort to this, but proactive measures are called for. “John, hand me your phone.”

John’s head whips around. “Why, what do you want it for?”

"Nothing nefarious," he assures, wiggling his fingers. "Just for a minute."

John’s eyes narrow, but he digs into his pocket anyway. “Don’t know why I listen to you. You’re a bloody tyrant sometimes.”

He slaps the phone into Sherlock's palm. At least some things about him are as predictable as ever. Sherlock sets to work, tilting the screen away from John’s curious gaze. It's probably wholly unnecessary, but he isn't taking any chances. After a few minutes of fiddling, the failsafe is installed and John's phone is paired with his own. Now if they ever become separated, Sherlock will be able to find him quickly.

He hands the device back. John studies it with a puzzled frown. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did you do with it?”

Sherlock turns back to the window. He peers out at the clouds, pretending to be thoroughly interested in the view. “Installed an app.”

“What app?” John's eyes bore into the back of his head over several minutes of obstinate silence. “Sherlock, what app?”

“Did you know that Altocumulus clouds are often a precursor to thunderstorms?”

“Sherlock—”

“It would be a remarkably useful means of predicting the evening’s weather if they weren’t mostly obscured by the stratus and cumulus layers. Pity, that.”

“That’s why God invented the weatherman.”

He glances over at John, a smirk hovering at his lips. “Don’t be silly.”

“Whatever you installed, I’m uninstalling it,” John declares, his fingers tapping audibly against the screen. “When I find the icon.” The tapping intensifies. “You’ve hidden the icon. For God’s sake…”

John struggles with his phone in futility, muttering an array of colourful curses under his breath. Sherlock ignores it, secretly pleased with himself. There’ll probably be no need for Mycroft’s little toy, but one can never be too careful. He fishes a partially-squashed packet of airline peanuts from his pocket. He pops it open, flinching at the burst of salt that invades the air. John generally responds positively to the sight of him eating. Crunching a peanut between his teeth, he keeps a surreptitious eye out for John’s reaction. It soon does the trick; when John finally looks up from his screen and notices him, the lines of frustration around his eyes smooth out.

He puts his phone away with a defeated sigh. "This is going to be a long bloody week, isn't it."

Sherlock leans back in his chair, pressing his hands together in satisfaction. That’s one less worry to be dealing with. John will be fine. He’ll forget to be angry soon enough, and with any luck he might even start having fun. For all that they bicker over the small things, John must be aware that he is an object of Sherlock’s quiet obsession. It would be difficult to miss. The way he can't help but stare at John in the hallway after a long, heart-pounding chase through London, just glad that he's there, giggling and breathless and enjoying himself every bit as Sherlock is. How he can't resist any opportunity to stand close to him, or touch the exposed skin of his wrists, or his fingers as John hands him a freshly brewed cup of tea. Just to sample the texture, of course. Catalog the temperatures of various parts of a living body that isn't his own. There are purely clinical, scientific justifications to everything he does and somehow continues to get away with.

And if John is aware that it's a farce, he doesn't show it. Sherlock is pretty sure he doesn't know, even though he gives it away in so many thousands of little conscious and unconscious ways. Nevertheless, he worries sometimes that John will eventually pick up on it, and what then? What would he even say? These feelings are difficult to express and even harder to define; it's a sentimental attraction, no doubt, and calling John his ‘friend’ has always felt woefully inaccurate. But as to what exactly this feeling is that has been growing steadily and inexorably since the day they met, he couldn't say and doesn't want to examine it too closely. John is in constant awe of him, too, but it isn’t the same. John enjoys his company, being one of the few who genuinely do. It must be so easy for him, not having to wrestle with a tangle of confused sentiments and dangerous feelings unbefitting of a strictly platonic relationship, but that’s okay. Most of the time what they have is enough, and when it isn’t, there has always been the violin to chase away any of his more fanciful wishes.

When Sherlock glances back over at him, John is asleep in his seat, head lolling to the side, snoring lightly.

 

*******

 

It’s midday by the time they touch down in the outskirts of Mahon. The heat is stifling as they step off the plane, hazy lines rising from the tarmac. Only the slightest breeze caresses Sherlock’s face and whispers through his curls, carrying with it a scent of jasmine and coffee above the unmistakable saltiness of the nearby coast. He breathes it in, feeling a familiar rush of excitement for the adventure that awaits.

The sun’s glare forces him to squint as he surveys their new surroundings. The airport is nestled beneath a dramatic horizon of rolling hills, verdant green and speckled with tiny, distant villages, white walls gleaming in the summer sunlight. He instantly regrets wearing his usual attire to a place like this. He slips out of his blazer, hanging it over his arm as they walk to the terminal.

At least John is dressed more appropriately for the climate, wearing a thin, brightly-coloured t-shirt, Khaki shorts and open-toed sandals. He extracts a pair of stylish sunglasses from his pocket and slides them over his face. Sherlock doesn’t realise he’s staring until John grins up at him.

“Maybe the terminal will sell you a pair,” he says, the dark lenses catching the sun’s reflection. Sherlock averts his gaze. “They usually have them. Ugly as sin and expensive, no doubt, but it’s good business, gouging all them tourists who don’t bother planning more than five minutes ahead of themselves.”

“Smugness doesn’t suit you,” Sherlock grumbles, shielding his eyes with his free hand. Those glasses, on the other hand, suit him ridiculously well. They make him look like some kind of movie star, to which Sherlock suddenly feels like his besuited bodyguard.

Tourist season is in full swing on the tiny island, and rivers of people pour through the terminals and drift like flotsam along the horizontal conveyors, making it difficult to navigate. As they wait for their bags to arrive at the carousel, John pulls out the brochure Sherlock stuffed in his pocket earlier that morning. He reads aloud from the glossy page. “Join us on the cruise of a lifetime aboard the MV Aurora, and explore the beauty of the Mediterranean Sea. Set sail from Menorca and spend seven unforgettable nights surrounded by luxury, blah blah…” His brow creases. “Seven nights? We’re not actually going to be on it that long, are we?”

“Depends how long it takes to find him,” Sherlock says. “It’s a big ship. There’ll be close to a thousand crew members on board, and three times as many passengers. Even with the description the girl gave us, it’s going to take a while to pick him out, if he’s even still there.”

“Wonderful.” Their cases come into view, and John tugs them off the conveyor.

Before they leave, Sherlock drags them through the departure lounge and into a boutique store where racks of truly hideous plastic sunglasses sit on display. After minutes of indecision, he begrudgingly selects the least awful-looking pair he can find, and John thanks him to finally be leaving the place. On their way out, Sherlock catches his reflection in a window and cringes at the sight of it. Cheap plastic, a garish shade of red, the frame sits heavy and too high on the bridge of his nose. John says nothing, but covers his mouth and emits a stifled noise that he swears was just a cough.

They make their way outside the air-conditioned terminal, and Sherlock can't help but notice John’s posture is stiffer than usual. It's not exhaustion; he’s pensive, coiled in on himself like a tightly wound spring. Far from relaxing into the sunny atmosphere as Sherlock had hoped, he seems to be growing increasingly tense. The more he's thought about what might be troubling John about this case, the less it makes sense. The only answer that fits can't possibly be why, and yet he's ruled out everything else. It couldn’t really be that simple… could it?

Time is running out. Soon he'll be focused on their mission and he can't afford John to suffer another bout of panic when it may put him in danger. There's nothing else to be done but pry it out of him. Sherlock affects a casual tone as they make their way to the main road to wait for a taxi. “Don’t people usually enjoy this sort of thing?” he asks, coversationally. “'A week away in a hot country on an all-expenses paid trip', or whatever it is those inane game show hosts say. I had thought you'd rather enjoy it, given how much time you spend vicariously living the experience.”

“I don’t watch half as much telly as you claim,” John sniffs. His mouth opens to speak again, but the attempt is aborted twice before any words materialise. “It’s not… I am grateful, Sherlock. Honestly. It's nice getting away from London now and then.”

Sherlock turns to him. “I know this case has been difficult. We're both ready to be done with it. I don't say it often enough, but your assistance has been essential, and more than that, I enjoy your company.”

John looks up, his eyes brightening. “We have a laugh, don’t we?”

He hums affirmatively. “I didn’t dream of working with anybody before, but it’s difficult to imagine going back to that now. Being— working alone, I mean.” He pauses, shocked for a moment that the sentiment rings truer than he’d anticipated. He covers it with a coy smile. “There’s something to be said for having a captive audience.”

“The frailty of genius. Yeah, I know,” John says, watching him with such fondness that he feels his cheeks reddening.

“What I mean is, we both worked hard for this. You’ve earned the right as much as I have to share in the victory of a job well done. I didn’t want you to miss it, that's all.”

It’s manipulative, and a little too honest for his comfort, but it seems to have the desired effect. John smiles warmly, losing some of the worry from his features. It never ceases to amaze Sherlock how deeply sentiment, of all things, came to have such influence in their dynamic. Are they both so starved for companionship that a simple compliment can have so profound an effect? In John’s case, he can’t see how that could be true. John has other friends. He spends almost every weekend either down at the local pub with Lestrade, or else out on dates with his lady-friend-of-the-week. He manages to satisfy his every social need— he can’t possibly be lonely. As for Sherlock, it never mattered to him before. Loneliness has been par for the course in his life for as long as he can remember, he grew numb to it around the time he first discovered cocaine. Besides, there are very real advantages to not having to consider the opinions of others when choosing one's actions. He has long enjoyed that freedom, and has no intention of relinquishing it.

But he can't deny the way his heart expands to bursting whenever John looks at him with pure admiration in his eyes.

The silence threatens to engulf them, and John’s open expression wavers. Sherlock sobers enough to remember why he is subtly breaking character. He cocks his head to the side. “Is Menorca not to your liking?”

John looks away. Then a wistful smile comes over his features. His gaze wanders over the town. “No, it’s not that. I love it here. Haven’t been back in years. Mum brought us a few times when we were kids, me and Harry. I’ve got some good memories of this place.”

“So the problem is me, then.” Checkmate. Sherlock turns away, nodding decisively to himself. “I worried as much. I should have noticed sooner. Your tolerance of me is notably higher than most, but I suppose everybody has their limits.”

“No, Sherlock—” John grabs his arm. “God, no, don't be silly. It’s not that. I'm not tired of you.” Sherlock waits. John’s hand falls away. “It’s just, you know. On a cruise. It’s not like you actually get to enjoy the island itself, do you? You spend the whole time out… out there.”

“On the sea,” Sherlock supplies, watching him carefully. A light sheen of sweat blossoms over John's upper lip, and he shifts his weight. “Ah…”

John’s head whips up at the sound. ”What?” he says sharply. “What, ‘ _ah_?’”

“It was the first thing that occurred to me, of course, but I hadn’t thought it possible. How—”

“No, you're wrong,” John says, raising a finger. “Whatever you think you’ve figured out, you’re wrong. I just prefer a hotel to a ship, that’s all. End of story.”

But it’s too late; Sherlock’s mind is sparking with questions and leaping to conclusions and bubbling with ideas, and oh, this _is_ going to be fun after all. The only way this could be any more perfect is if the Aurora has a swimming pool.

“Of course. May I have that brochure back for a minute?”

John hesitates, hackles raised like some wild, distrustful creature. Then with a familiar sigh of defeat, he slaps the booklet into Sherlock’s outstretched palm just as their taxi pulls up to the curb.


	4. Chapter 4

The ride to the dock is, in a word, uncomfortable. The air conditioning in the cab is broken. Even rolling the windows down to their limits barely takes the edge off, leaving them sweltering in the midday heat. John’s shirt is soaked through with sweat in a matter of minutes, and though the cabbie apologises profusely in his thick Catalan accent, he doesn’t have the energy to complain.

At least they’re all suffering equally. Even Sherlock, who typically never looks put out by the weather, is looking alarmingly fatigued. Head propped up with one hand, he sits slouched over against the rattling door as he scans his cruise brochure with droopy eyes. Despite this, he’s hardly sweating at all. John knows a sign of severe dehydration when he sees it. He digs a bottle of water from his bag and tosses it into Sherlock's lap.

“Drink it,” John insists, “or you’ll shrivel up and evaporate before we even get there.”

Sherlock’s eyes roll in that typical way of his, but he relents when it becomes apparent that John won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Reluctant sips soon become thirsty gulps as his dried-out senses are reinvigorated. Satisfied, John returns to his silent brooding.

The ride continues in silence for long minutes as the road snakes down towards the coast. The next time John looks over to check on him, Sherlock is wearing a self-satisfied smirk on his face. It sends a fresh wave of cold sweat trickling down his neck. "What are you so giddy about?" he asks. Sherlock doesn't respond, save to adjust his position to something more dignified. John's stomach twists with dread. He only gets that look when he's planning something, and that usually equals trouble. Being trapped on a ship for seven days is a bad enough prospect by itself, but with Sherlock having figured out exactly why it bothers him so much, he has to resist a strong urge to fling open the cab door and go running for the hills.

It’s not that Sherlock teases him about his shortcomings. John doesn't expect him to use his newly discovered knowledge in a malicious way. It’s just that he has this annoying habit of trying to _help_ , and much like his deductive analysis, he seems unable to switch it off. If Sherlock thinks he has the solution to something then nothing in Heaven or on Earth will stop him from testing his theory. And Sherlock is well aware of this. He describes it as an itch he needs to scratch, otherwise it will occupy his mind and bother him constantly, but John thinks it’s probably a form of mild OCD. If it were limited to himself and his own possessions, that would be fine, but his need to control aspects of John’s life can sometimes border on intolerable. John knows he doesn’t mean ill by it, but all the same, Sherlock’s definition of ‘helping’ can be heavy-handed.

But he’s learning. Personal boundary issues is something they've been working on together. When John first moved in, Sherlock had shockingly little concept of him needing his own space. Privacy was virtually non-existent. He would barge into John's bedroom in the middle of the night just to inform him about something 'interesting' his latest mould cultures had produced. That was the last night John slept in the nude. Compared to that, Sherlock showed remarkable restraint last night in not simply bullying the answer out of him, but John can still feel him burning with curiosity.

If he’d hoped for that to abate over time, he sorely underestimated how fascinated Sherlock seems to be about all things _John Watson_. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s Sherlock’s friend or merely a live-in test subject for him to study and experiment on. But it's worth it, he supposes. Yeah, he could do a lot worse. He jokes, but living with Sherlock has been some of the best and most exciting years of his life. He wouldn't trade it for the world.

"Ah, there it is." A particular page has caught Sherlock’s interest. Those sharp, silver eyes flick up, gleaming with mischief. There is no mistaking that look: The ship has a swimming pool.

"Don't get any ideas," John warns. No matter what Sherlock thinks, there is no way he’s going anywhere near that pool. Anyway, they’ll be too busy for mucking about. With any luck, Sherlock will get so caught up in the hunt for their quarry, he’ll forget all about trying to 'fix' John's issues. It’s a comforting enough fantasy to stem the rise of another wave of panic.

They finally arrive at the harbour. John practically leaps out of the oven-like cab, leaving Sherlock to pay the driver. He's so grateful for the breeze that whips at his hair and cools his damp skin that he doesn't even mind that the place stinks of brine and gutted fish. Gulls screech and swoop overhead like flying velociraptors against the deep blue of the sky, and when he turns towards the dock, there it is: The Aurora. A brilliant white behemoth, towering over the far end of the wharf like a wayward cliff of Dover. His mouth falls open. He’d been imagining something half this size; even Sherlock seems impressed by its stature.

He can make out at least five decks stacked atop a sheer, steep hull, lined with gleaming windows from end to end. A series of bright orange lifeboats hug the visible side of it, huddled beneath the canopy of the deck above, while at the front of the ship a gantry crane hauls supplies from the wharf onto the ship’s fore. At ground level, a smattering of last-minute passengers are boarding along a covered walkway attached to the town-sized construction of steel and glass. From their vantage point at the road, even the top deck of the ship is visible, and John’s heart flutters as he recognises the distinct rectangle of blue in its centre.

A damn swimming pool. What little hope that Sherlock was bluffing dies in the pit of his stomach.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Sherlock comments, looking entirely too happy about all this as he hands over John’s suitcase. “Though I must admit, the concept of having an area dedicated to the containment of water on a sea-faring vessel seems a bit redundant. I’d much rather take a dip in the real thing. Less people and their assorted bodily _excretions_.” He scrunches his nose in disgust.

John shoots him a glare that could curdle milk, but can’t help his eye being drawn back to the monstrosity that sits waiting for them like the ferry to Hades. His stomach attempting a flip. “It's… enormous. The captain’s name isn’t Charon, is it? I spent my last Danake on the horses.”

Sherlock gives him a baffled look. “Davenport, I think. ‘ _Danake_ ’?”

“Nevermind.”

“We’re late,” he says. “I think we missed the muster drill.”

John glances up at him. “The what?”

“Nevermind,” Sherlock parrots, earning him a sharp poke in the ribs, although John probably deserved that one. He’s more impressed that Sherlock even knows what a ‘muster drill’ is, given that he barely understands how Oyster cards work.

John lets himself be led down onto the quay, silently cursing that he may be, after all, stupid enough to follow Sherlock into Hell.

 

*******

 

The second he steps onto the ship proper, John’s brain refuses to accept the wooden deck as solid ground. Even at a standstill, the gentle rocking of the ship is doing a number on his sense of balance, so much so that his stomach begins churning and making threatening noises at him.

The reality of his predicament slams home with the force of a hurricane. In a matter of minutes the ship will set sail— and he’ll be on it. Soon there’ll be nothing but miles-deep water in all directions. No escape, no going back. Whatever happens will be completely out of his control. His toes dig into the soles of his shoes as if they could grip the very boards beneath him and refuse to let go.

Unimpressed, Sherlock prods at his shoulder with a bony finger. “John. You’re blocking the way.”

“I can’t…” Rooted in place, his heart beating a mile a minute, John’s body refuses to follow orders. A firm pair of hands grip his shoulders and try to push him on, but he knocks them away, spinning back and ending up face-to-chest with one of Sherlock’s shirt buttons. “I can’t do this,” he hisses, his eyes anchored to that button, clinging to it as though it were a life-preserver. “Move out of the way.”

Sherlock clicks his tongue. “It’s just a little motion sickness, John. You’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be _fine_!” he yells, his calm snapping like a tightly wound string. Panic prickles along his skin and raises the hairs on the back of his sweaty neck. He tries again to push Sherlock out of the way but those big, solid hands return and hold him in place. It takes every last scrap of his control to not lash out and remove them by force. “Sherlock, I’m not kidding. Let go.”

Sherlock seems mildly amused by it all, obstinately blocking him even as John tries to pry his grip away. Beneath him, the ship begins to tip in an entirely new direction, and he has no choice but to stop fighting and grab fistfuls of Sherlock’s shirt for stability. He swallows down a wretched wave of sickness, squeezing his eyes shut against the rising urge to vomit.

“Please, Sherlock. I’m serious. This is torture. I won’t last seven days of this.”

“Yes you will,” Sherlock says, his tone infuriatingly calm. “Listen. Focus. Take deep breaths and control it. It’s easy.”

John tries to shake his head, to protest that _no, it isn’t bloody easy at all_ , but the movement only makes him feel worse. He tries taking deep, slow breaths — in through the nose (hold it, one, two, three…) out through the mouth — but it coats the back of his throat with the ipecac of salt and brine, bitter flavours that threaten to make him retch. His chin dimples and quivers with the effort of holding himself back, and all the while it feels like gravity has ceased to follow its own rules.

Behind them, other passengers waiting to board begin to mumble complaints, and Sherlock manages to pull John aside to let them pass. He leans John against the solid wall of the deck as if to help ground him, and it helps a bit, but he can hardly hug the walls for the entire trip.

“This is ridiculous,” he complains weakly. “How am I going to eat like this? How will I even sleep?”

“John, relax. You’re thinking too much.”

A dry laugh squeezes from his chest. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Perhaps. However, I’m not the one about to ruin both our shoes.” Before John even knows what’s happening, Sherlock shoves him towards the outer railing, and a hand on the back of his neck is bending him low, and then he’s doubling over to vomit.

One of Sherlock’s arms hooks over his back and under his armpit, anchoring him securely as his stomach empties itself. His throat burns and hot tears sting his eyes. He closes them to block out the sight of the waves churning twenty feet beneath his suspended head.

“Told you you should have skipped breakfast,” Sherlock deadpans, being a solid wall of support at his back. John almost laughs between groans, too overloaded to truly care about the ridiculousness of their current position. When the spasms eventually taper off he straightens up, bleary-eyed and dazed. Ever one step ahead, Sherlock is ready with a tissue. “Trust me, you’ll get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” he replies, wiping his mouth. He spits into the tissue and grimaces at the lingering foulness at the back of his tongue. “I could do with a drink after that.”

Sherlock’s mouth quirks. “I bet. Come on, let’s go get settled in our rooms. Freshen up. The stink of us probably isn’t helping matters.”

He sniffs his own shirt and promptly recoils. John screws up his nose, but a quiet giggle bubbles out of his chest despite himself. Maybe he’s right. He’s Sherlock, after all; the annoying git is always right, sometimes seeming to know John even better than he knows himself. It’s part of why John has always trusted his judgement almost without question, as uncomfortable it may be to admit that he can be read as easily as an open book. Especially given how often he struggles to read his own pages. But that’s irrational, he knows, because to Sherlock _everyone_ is an open book, and it wouldn’t make a difference if he was the most stoic man on Earth; he still couldn’t wilfully hide anything from him.

Not that it’s such a bad thing, he supposes. Save for one or two things he keeps shoved to the very back of his mind and doesn’t care to examine if he can possibly help it, he considers himself a very simple man with not much in the way of secrets to hide.

Having expunged his morning toast to the mild disgust of onlookers, his head isn’t swimming quite as much as before. He has to focus on Sherlock’s shirt buttons to maintain any sort of internal equilibrium, but as long as he doesn’t try to do anything stupid like read, he might be okay. He’ll just pretend he’s not surrounded by water. That’ll work. He’s good at pretending he’s not about to die a horrible death when literally surrounded on all sides by it, and this should be no different. If he doesn’t go outside, doesn’t see it, then he won’t have to acknowledge it, and maybe he’ll even get used to it after a while; immunity through gentle, low-pressure exposure.

And if not? Well, a little sea-sickness won’t kill him.

Interrupting his thoughts, a voice crackles over the ship’s Tannoy system to announce their imminent departure, and Sherlock looks to him expectantly. “Well?”

Last chance. He gazes longingly at the gangway. “Okay,” he says eventually, lifting his chin. “I can’t promise I’ll be much use, but I’ll try.”

“Good man,” Sherlock says, clapping him on the shoulder. “You won’t regret it.”


	5. Chapter 5

To his eternal credit, Sherlock doesn’t immediately abandon him to pursue their quarry. John may well have turned tail and fled if he did. Instead he shows remarkable patience, escorting John up to their rooms as if he were helping a sloshed mate wobble home from the local pub. He says nothing as John clutches onto his arm— not even when the ship’s engines roar to life, and John’s fingers tighten into a death-grip around his sleeve.

It’s sweet of him, John muses. Which is a rare descriptor for a man who typically hates being touched. God only knows how silly he must feel, having someone hanging off his arm like a drunken opossum. But if it’s bothering him, he doesn’t show it. In fact, his attention is fixed with the same determination and seriousness as with any other task he sets his mind to. Against all logic, getting John Watson up to his room is being treated with the same solemn importance as examining a fresh crime scene.

Sherlock would never allow this with anybody else, John is certain of it. It’s in moments like this where his human heart can’t help but shine through the veil of his self-ascribed sociopathy. For all his protesting to the contrary, there’s undoubtedly a part of Sherlock that’s capable of putting another person’s wellbeing above his own, and it wasn’t something that developed over months of gradually deepening familiarity between them; it was that way almost from the very start. At the time, John had no idea how out of character it was, but now he recognises it as a unique priviledge. He alone occupies that treasured place in Sherlock’s world, and he has no idea what earned him the rights to be there.

Maybe the fact that he killed a man to save Sherlock's life on the very first night had something to do with it. But to be fair, Sherlock saved him first.

Whatever the reason may be, Sherlock trusts and cares for him on an unprecedented level. The thought rouses a wave of butterflies in his stomach that has nothing to do with his seasickness.

With steady effort, Sherlock guides him to the tenth deck suites. John pours all his focus into the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other. If they’re getting strange looks from the other passengers, both of them pretend not to notice. When they eventually arrive at their rooms, Sherlock extracts himself from his living manacle and leaves him propped up next to the door.

“You’ll be alright for a while?”

John fishes the room key from his shorts. Fumbling to unlock the fancy sensor-based lock, John musters a few embarrassing words of thanks. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thank you. For the help, that was very… I appreciate it. Thanks.”

Sherlock gives a curt nod and retreats into his own quarters. John swipes his key repeatedly across the sensor until it opens, and drags his suitcase inside. Finally alone, he lets out a shaky breath.

 _God_. What has he got himself into?

He’s not sure what he expected, but this is the smallest hotel room he’s ever stayed at. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. The bed is squeezed into the middle and dominates most of the available floor space. A single door off to the side leads to a marble-tiled bathroom, and one of the walls contains an inbuilt wardrobe with a sliding door designed to take up as little room as possible. The decor is a bit modern for his tastes, but the cramped feel of the room is familiar in a way that feels secure, if not quite what he was imagining as ‘luxury’. But it'll do. Maybe it’s old habits lingering way past their due, but John hasn’t felt comfortable sleeping in too-open spaces since before his serving days. At least sleeping here won’t be too much of a hardship.

He collapses onto the bed, squeezing his eyes tightly for a moment. The silky linens are soft and cool beneath his aching muscles, and suddenly the weight of his exhaustion settles over him like a lead blanket. It feels like they’ve been travelling for days. Checking his watch, it’s only just gone lunchtime. Christ, he feels old. The years are catching up to him more and more lately. He can’t pull all-nighters like he once had to in the Army. Not like a certain someone. How Sherlock manages it, he’ll never know. The man barely ever eats or drinks. He has a sleep schedule that makes the doctor in John shudder with horror, and yet for all his neglectful habits, he still has the capacity to bounce off the walls like a child hopped up on sweets when he gets bored. Maybe it’s for the best he’ll be out and about, rather than spending much time cooped in his room. Just imagining Sherlock trying to sleep in a bed this short tickles his sense of humour.

He can just see Sherlock’s bare legs dangling off the foot of the bed, his youthful face at the other end pouting at the unfairness of it all like a stroppy teenager. John giggles to himself, playing with the fantasy for a while as the tension in his nerves gradually uncoils. Maybe he should let himself snooze for a few blissful hours, let his body acclimatize to the rolling waves while he sleeps. All the better for him and their mission if it does. According to the ship's itinerary, they won’t be arriving at their first destination, Cagliari, until midnight.

Just as he begins to drift, John's phone pings with a new message. He fishes it out and holds it over his face, squinting tiredly at the glowing screen.

_Going to scout a bit. You should familiarise yourself with the ship’s layout. Keep on the lookout for our target, message me any leads. Pic attached. -SH_

Sherlock’s already on the move, then. He should have expected as much.

 _Was thinking of having a nap first_ , he types back, then takes a look at the attachment Sherlock sent him. It’s a police sketch of their target, a man named Mikhail Petrov, based on the description provided by the victim: Bald, muscular, with broad shoulders and a thick, sinuous neck. No distinguishing marks or tattoos. He looks otherwise fairly nondescript. John does his best to commit all the details to memory, but wonders vaguely how on Earth they’re meant to find him on board a ship with over three thousand people roaming around.

As John studies the image, some movement in his peripheral vision catches his attention. Through window at the far end of the room, a flock of gulls glide and circle above the water’s surface. John’s gaze slips past them to the Menorca coastline as it recedes into the horizon, fading to a hazy blue as it shrinks away along with the last traces of dry, solid land. He shudders, closing his eyes against the stark reality of the view. There's no going back now.

The ping of his phone draws his attention back. He’s grateful for the distraction, but the message is far from sympathetic.

_Crime doesn’t operate around your sleep schedule, John. Tonight will be Mikhail's first opportunity to smuggle someone off the ship. We have to begin the search immediately and we can’t afford to waste any time. Sleep when we reach Marseille. -SH_

Marseille? That’s days away. In fact, it’s their last stop before returning to Mahon. John sighs, dropping his phone to the bed. Well, that didn't take long, did it? True to form, Sherlock has already reverted to his usual brash self. How quickly his walls go back up, his attention refocused by the allure of the case. While it doesn’t seem that his earlier concern was disingenuous, he did grow bored of it awfully quickly. Caring, as it turns out, takes quite a bit of energy. Who knew?

Feeling a little snubbed, John starts pecking out a reply with his thumb to delay the inevitable as long as possible. He really, really doesn't want to get up. But as frustrating as it is, Sherlock does have a point. This isn’t a holiday; they’re here to do a job, to potentially save someone’s life. The attack could happen at any moment. Imagine explaining that one to Lestrade: " _Sorry, he nabbed someone and disappeared while I was having a nap_." Doesn't exactly scream _compassionate_.

He deletes the snarky message he was typing, sending instead:

 _Fine._ _Figure out HIS sleep schedule, and I’ll operate around that._

That should satisfy him. An easy compromise, and sleep can wait a little longer. John leaves the phone on the bed and hauls himself to his feet.

He avails himself of a cold shower to clear his mind and scrub away the accumulated grime of the morning. The routine wakes him up a bit, bringing a welcome relief that sinks into his skin and loosens his sore muscles. By the time he’s clean and dressed again, he feels steadier on his feet, and the queasy roiling in his stomach has given way to the painful squeeze of hunger. He decides to start his exploration in the dining room. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. With any luck, Sherlock will be so wrapped up in the adventure that he’ll forget all about the swimming thing.

A fool can hope.


	6. Chapter 6

John’s reaction to the ship was stronger than expected; clearly his issues run deeper than they first appeared. It’s a worry. He’ll have to move _Operation Waterwings_ further up in his schedule, but first he needs to become attuned to the ebb and flow of this new environment. Then, like the silvery dart of fish scale that ripples the surface of a calm pond, any disturbance in the natural rhythm will be all the easier to pick out.

The first day on-board the Aurora proves daunting. This ship is more than just a big boat— it’s an entire floating city. The densely-packed decks thrum with activity and noise, music and sweat, packed as it is with bronzed holiday-goers and the harried staff who attend to them. Only now does Sherlock truly appreciate the enormity of the task he’s set himself. Nevertheless, he goes about it in his usual style: Systematically. There is no other way to tackle a task so huge.

He spends the first couple of hours tailing various members of staff back and forth across the ship, noting the most common routes and shortcuts, all the while building his mental map of the environment. John hadn’t been wrong about him drying up in this heat. Most of the ship may be pleasantly air-conditioned, but the open-air decks radiate in the sweltering summer sun. He downs two small bottles of mineral water by the time the first crew rotation occurs, and has to make a brief detour on his way back across the ship for a third. As he stands at a vending machine in the entrance to one of the ship’s many cafés, a familiar voice reaches his ears. He peeks his head inside.

Across an ocean of glass-top tables, John stands chatting with one of the female wait staff. He’s positioned about as far from any sea-view windows as one could manage; a strategy that seems to be serving him well. He looks relaxed, his hands stuffed casually in the pockets of his shorts, much improved from the state Sherlock last saw him in. Then again, maybe his mind is on other things. The buxom young woman he’s caught the attention of is so obviously flirting with him, it makes Sherlock cringe.

Typical. The day he manages to take John somewhere without him ending up on a date will be the day Scotland Yard grows a usable brain between them. John says something inaudible and the waitress touches his arm and throws her head back in laughter. It’s an invitation that not even Sherlock, with his admitted lack of social awareness, could miss; and, right on cue, John’s eyes flick down to admire her ample chest. The appreciative gleam in his eyes tells Sherlock everything he needs to know about where John’s mind is.

His jaw clenches. He shouldn’t have to put up with this nonsense. The worst of it is that John will get angry at _him_ when he inevitably has to step in and resolve the situation. If he didn’t want Sherlock sabotaging his dates, he shouldn’t keep trying to have them at the most inopportune times, like in the middle of a case. Or when Sherlock is bored and needs someone to read him the paper because he doesn’t want to get up from the couch. It’s not such a difficult concept to grasp.

When John glances back up, he catches Sherlock’s eye from across the room and seems surprised to see him there. He arches an eyebrow as if to say, “Could you blame me?”

Sherlock briefly wishes he had the power of telepathy, because his reply would be something along the lines of, “Yes, actually. We’re supposed to be hunting for a very _different_ kind of prize. Is it so impossible for you to keep it in your pants for a week?”

But the message is lost in translation. John recovers quickly, slipping smoothly back into what is no doubt a truly _riveting_ conversation.

The coffee-soaked air has grown too sour to bear another second. Sherlock storms out of the café, ruffling his heat-flattened curls to feel the breeze through them again. If John needs this to take his mind off things… Fine. But he won’t need it for much longer. Tomorrow, Sherlock is going to teach him to swim. No more nausea, no more coping strategies, and no more flirting with anything that passes by him on two legs. No more _distractions_. Just the two of them, working together, as it should be.

The rest of the day passes far too quickly. Just learning the shift schedule chews up several precious hours. He scans each face he encounters, building a mental picture of the crew, but progress is slow and there isn’t enough time to catalogue everybody before the shift changes, leaving broad gaps in his collection. Nobody he’s seen so far fits the profile of the man they’re searching for, and every moment he goes unchecked could spell doom for some unfortunate passenger.

He continues to haunt the busy junctions between decks like a unfettered ghost, familiarising himself with the evening crew. He makes some progress, but he can only cover a single deck at a time. When the shifts change again, a fresh set of data has to be collated. This mission is beginning to unsettle him. Something seems not quite right, like he’s forgetting something, but he pushes it to the back of his mind. He’s just getting frustrated. He can do this.

Hours later, a headache is blooming at the back of his skull. Three shifts, and not a single one of them is fully accounted for. He’s beginning to doubt himself— this may be impossible after all. To make matters worse, he hasn’t heard from John in a while. He should probably check up on him.

_Anything? -SH_

It takes thirteen long minutes for John to respond, probably too busy flirting. Sherlock’s hackles raise in irritation.

_Nope. Not a lott of baldies tho. Atleast he’ll be easier to spot in a cwrowd. Any luck there?_

He pinches the bridge of his nose. Reading that ramped his headache up a notch.

_Is your phone not on vibrate? Or auto-correct, for that matter? Where are you? -SH_

Another silent eon passes. So long, in fact, that he’s not even sure if the text was actually sent. But his phone buzzes again just as he’s about to send a follow-up. He squints at the screen, struggling to decipher John’s horrible spelling.

_Sorry, the bass here kindna drowns it out. Did yuo know they have TWO nightlcubs o this ship?? And a disco hall, and abuot a hndred bars. I had no isdea crusies were like thisn. I’m starting to enjoy mysefl a bit._

He isn’t sure what he just read. Whatever it was, it’s useless and barely legible. The nausea must have returned full force to be having that kind of effect on him. Poor John. The sooner Sherlock does something to resolve his seasickness, the better for them both. He shoves his phone back into his pocket with a sigh. As usual, the hard part is going to be all down to him.

As daylight fades, the last scraps of Sherlock’s patience dissolves with it. It only took him one day to get sick of this place, of the people and the constant, pressing noise, music from a dozen sources filtering through every wall and merging into one deep, constant rumble that assaults his ears and constricts his chest with pressure. How do people enjoy this? He can’t even concentrate well enough to think. He needs a moment’s peace or he might just snap at the next cheery-faced drunkard who accidentally bumps into him.

He makes his way outside for the first time in hours. The sea air greets him with a cooling spray, whistling past his years and soothing his hot, clammy skin. It’s mercifully quiet. There’s not so many people out here this time of evening; a few scattered loners, couples quietly enjoying the sunset together. There’s room to breathe —what novelty!— to collect his thoughts, if only for a few blissful minutes. When he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine the ship being empty and silent.

But to do so would be to miss a spectacular view. Sherlock isn’t usually one to pause long enough to appreciate the natural aesthetics of the world. He doesn’t simply _view_ the world— he autopsies it. But you just don’t get scenery like this in London. Having spent his life picking apart every scene piece-by-piece, it’s difficult to pull back and take in the wider picture. But even he has to admit there’s something striking about a sunset over a wide open sea.

He takes a moment of pure indulgence to bask in its glow. As much as he loves the city, it can so easily drown him in too much sensory input. He can try to hide away inside Baker Street, but the city presses in, seeps through the cracks in the walls and filters in through the windows, an all-pervading vitality, a pulse of life that can never fully be ignored. Out here the world sleeps, and the nights fall into absolute tranquillity, calming in ways London never is.

In another life, perhaps he would have lived here instead, on the open sea, far from all the noise and the people. Not on a cruise ship; he isn’t that insulated from the noise of the inner decks. But perhaps he’d be a sailor. Or a pirate. It would be a life of near-solitude, and he would guard it fiercely. And though there was once a time when he couldn’t have imagined sharing such a life with anyone else, now he couldn’t dream of it without John by his side. As much as he values being alone, John is unique, the only person whose company he finds tolerable, and in many instances, welcomed.

John, who trusts and admires him and asks so little, yet gives so much in return. Trustworthy John Watson, his steadfast moral compass, capable of making him belly-laugh one minute and seethe with unadulterated annoyance in the next. Surprising and predictable, mundane and fascinating. A life without John would be a very boring existence indeed.

But the thought occurs that, in this theoretical other life, they might never have met. Given John’s unfortunate neurosis, he doubts that their paths would have crossed at all. John wouldn’t set foot on a ship unless he was being marched off to war. Sherlock pushes the notion aside. What a depressing idea. But it does make him wonder: When did John’s presence become a _requirement_ in these fanciful notions of the perfect life? It never used to be so.

All the better he be a Consulting Detective than a pirate.

The MV Aurora pulls into port at Cagliari at the turn of midnight, completing the first leg of its circular journey around the Med. As the gangway is secured, John joins him on the promenade to watch the passengers as they filter off the ship.

“Any luck?” John asks after a few minutes of quiet reflection.

Sherlock glances aside to assess the state of him. Rosy-cheeked, John is visibly tired. He sways a little on his feet, but shows no other signs of nausea and seems to be in conspicuously good spirits. There’s something off about it, but he can’t quite put his finger on why. John takes his silence as an answer and does what he usually does when Sherlock is being quiet: Fills the gap with idle chatter.

“You know, it’s not a bad idea, all this,” he says, thumbing over his shoulder. “In theory it’s a brilliant idea. A whole travelling resort full of luxuries, and then every so often you get to visit a different city and go sightseeing for a few hours. I’d be all for it, if not for the whole ‘sailing across the sea’ bit. It’s a bit like going on holiday in Satan’s private limo.”

Sherlock isn’t listening to the words so much as the slurred way in which they’re being spoken. He catches a whiff of gin-soaked breath in the air and draws a troubling conclusion.

“Found one of the bars, I see. That would explain the atrocious spelling earlier,” he notes with audible displeasure.

“Eh? Oh, yeah. Just a few,” John replies. “You wouldn’t believe some of these cocktails they’re serving. Very fruity, but not half bad.”

Sherlock can’t be sure if that means he’s had a few drinks, or drank his way through several bars. John’s tolerance for alcohol is notably higher than the average male of his age, which has led Sherlock to suspect he was once far more like his sister than he would ever care to admit.

The pain in his temples pounds ever harder. “Whatever helps settle your nerves. But I do hope you did more than simply eat and drink your way around the ship all day. We are rather on a time-limit.” He considers bringing up the flirting as well, but he’s not in the mood to be accused of jealousy again and besides, he knows where he stands where John is concerned. That wishful ember was smothered long ago.

“Oi, give me a little credit,” John says, nudging his shoulder. “I was making a few friends, that’s all. Couldn’t say no to a few drinks. Chatted up some of the stewardesses while I was at it.”

And just like that, his mood plummets like a lead anchor. “Lovely,” he growls, what resolve he had moments before dissolving like acid in his gut. “Always on the pull. Glad your priorities are in order, but do try to remember why we’re here. Sex traffickers, lives at stake, that sort of thing? You can let your mind wander south later when we’ve done our job.”

John turns fully to face him. “Sherlock, you really are an impatient sod sometimes. If you’d let me finish, I’m trying to say I was gathering information. Asking around for gossip, that sort of thing. I wasn’t _on the pull_. Christ, the way you go on sometimes—”

“Don’t say it,” he bites back, an irrational tingle of fear making his heart speed up. John’s eyes lose some of their drink-soaked warmth.

“If you have so little faith in me, why am I even here? Why did you insist I even—”

“I didn’t—”

“Yes you bloody did!” John yells, the outburst startling Sherlock and causing a few nearby passengers to turn their heads towards the commotion. “This is about you having to control everything, as usual. You saw the reaction I had and couldn’t leave well enough alone. You had to figure it out. You had to try to _help_. Well thanks, but I don’t need it, and I’m not a sodding puzzle for your amusement. I’m choosing to focus on the case right now. Can you say the same?”

Sherlock opens his mouth to argue, but he’s right— this is distracting him more than he’d like to admit, and the look of disappointment in John’s glare is so sharp that it forces him to avert his eyes. Guilt solidifies beneath his ribs like a stone, weighing his heart down into his stomach. At home, John tolerates his fluctuating moods up to a point; there’s no controlling it when the cases are scarce and ennui begins to set in. But on a case, John has always held him to a higher standard.

Sherlock can confidently say he is a better man today thanks almost exclusively to the warmth and constancy of John’s friendship, so to disappoint him like this is a painful kick in the gut, and he only has himself to blame.

After a full minute of silence — during which Sherlock fails to come up with a response that wouldn’t immediately make things even worse — John backs off, leaning against the rail once more. “So. Did you have any luck?” he tries again, sounding each word as if speaking to a stubborn child. “I take it you’ve had a rough day, Sherlock, but I’m only trying to help.”

“I know.” He puffs his cheeks, dropping his chin to rest on the metal rail. “Sorry. A splitting headache is no excuse for snapping.”

“S’Alright,” he says.

“I may have slightly underestimated how long it would take to catalogue the schedules of a thousand crew members over three different shifts. Not to mention the passengers. God, John, the _passengers_. I had no idea it would be so… populated. Luxury cruise?” He scoffs. “I’m finding it quite hateful so far. Inside, at least.”

Air whistles through John’s lips. “’Tis a tall order. You sure we couldn’t have just gotten the captain’s help?”

“Didn’t bother to ask.” He ruffles his hair in frustration. “The less the crew are aware of us and what we’re doing here, the better. He’s unlikely to be working alone. At the very least, he may have bribed a few people so that he has places to hide himself and his victims as needed. Which reminds me: You should be careful who you’re speaking to. Don’t give anything away.”

“Ah… Right. Yeah, I will.”

He gazes down the length of the ship to where a fresh source of music has just begun pulsing its catchy 80s beat through the floorboards. His lets his eyes unfocus, losing himself in the multicoloured disco lights that dance around the main stage in a mesmerising display. “We got lucky tracking him here. But once his contract ends, he can vanish back out into the world. One week, John. If this one slips past us I’ll never get it out of my head. Traffickers… These are the dragons truly worth slaying. They are the very scum of humanity.”

Understanding shines in John’s alcohol-dimmed eyes. “He probably knows all the CCTV hotspots on-board. Uses his authority to guide some poor girl away—”

“Or boy,” Sherlock interjects. “Men get taken as well. It’s rarer, but it does happen.”

“Right. So he takes them to some secluded area and then attacks them. No evidence, no witnesses. By the time anyone might suspect him he’s off serving aboard another ship. Clever son of a bitch.”

Sherlock hums in agreement.

“How does he get them out, though?” John asks. “There’s only one way off the ship. Couldn’t we just watch the gangplank from here?”

“It’s a gangway, John."

"Oh. Right."

"But no, too risky. It’s possible I might be able to detect whether someone is being coerced to leave the ship against their will, but I’d rather not let him get that far. He could also be sedating them and having them offloaded as cargo.”

“Good point.”

“Learn anything useful, then, in the bar?” Sherlock asks, seeking a way to not-quite-apologise for his outburst earlier. John shifts his weight, idly kicking his toe against the metal rail.

“Not much. In hindsight it wasn't that good an idea to begin with.”

That's probably true; the less they speak to the staff, the better. If they let anything slip it could prove disasterous, but John knows this already and probably wouldn't take kindly to a reminder, however well-intentioned he would mean it. The last thing he wants to do is disappoint John again by showing so little faith in him. In fact, he's coping well so far; he's earned a break. The feel of solid earth under his feet for a few hours wouldn't hurt, and might be just the boost he needs for what Sherlock has planned tomorrow.

“Want to get off the ship for a while?” he offers. “It leaves at 6:00 AM. You could probably get some sleep then. I have a feeling our trafficker is working the night hours, but I’ll have to clear the morning crew tomorrow to be sure.”

The gratitude shines in his smile. “Thanks. Yeah, I think I will. You’re staying up here, then?”

“No rest for the wicked,” Sherlock quips, not quite feeling the humour in it himself. John raises his brow pointedly.

“Don’t overdo it. You should try to get some rest in somewhere, too. Doctor’s orders, you hear? You’ll make yourself ill if you’re not careful.”

“I’ll try.”

John pushes away from the rail. “God knows, I’d be useless trying to do all this. It’s bloody impressive, I’ll give you that. The world needs more of you. You’re bloody amazing, you know.”

“One of me is rather enough, I think,” he says, his skin warming at the unexpected compliment. With a wave over his shoulder, John disappears into the lower decks, and Sherlock turns back to the view beyond the dock, watching cars moving along distant roads like will’o’wisps in the dark.

_But I wouldn’t be half the man I am without you._


	7. Chapter 7

Having finished his observation of the morning shift, it’s as he suspected: The trafficker is playing it smart. It would be nigh impossible to hide someone for an entire day, to speak nothing of how dangerous it would be to attack someone in broad daylight. More likely he’s on the night shift, probably taking advantage of the low visibility and diminished foot-traffic to move about undetected.

On the plus side, there’s still a couple of hours left before the crew rotates again— time enough that certain other important matters can now be attended to. Thusly, somewhere in the straits between Tunisia and Sicily, Sherlock summons John up to the Lido deck with a vague but urgent-sounding text.

And now he waits.

It isn’t long before a slightly out-of-breath John appears, skidding to a halt when he spots Sherlock waiting for him by the pool. “I’m here, did you find—” The words die on his tongue. He does a double-take, looking Sherlock up and down as if catching a first glimpse at an alien. “What on earth are you wearing?”

Sherlock straightens reflexively. “No need to look so shocked. I believe a certain state of undress is allowed up here.”

John glances around the deck. “So this is what ‘Lido’ means. I wondered.” His eyes snap back. “Hang on. Are those mine?” He steps forward and plucks the sunglasses off Sherlock’s nose, glowering up at him in irritation. “Pickpocket. When’d you even get the chance?”

“Last night,” Sherlock says, bouncing on his heels. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice. It wasn’t exactly subtle. But then, you weren’t exactly at your most observant at the time.”

“S’pose I deserved it,” John mutters, hooking the glasses into his shirt collar. “Sorry about the drinking. Really. I did go a bit overboard with it. It’s just been a bit… difficult.”

Sherlock cracks a reassuring smile, fluttering his hand in the air. “It’s fine. Water over the bridge.”

He flashes a humorous look. “I think you mean 'under'. So, why exactly are we up here? You said it was important.” His eyes flit between Sherlock and the pool behind him, narrowing as the supicion creeps up on him like a tiger in the grass.

“We’ve got some free time.”

“I thought you were busy people-watching?” he says, almost accusatory. “Please tell me we’re here because our man’s serving cocktails at the tiki bar.”

“If you haven’t noticed, John, we’re the only two people up here at the moment.”

“Yeah, why is that?”

With a broad smile, Sherlock points him towards a nearby deckchair. A small, innocuous carrier bag sits atop his discarded clothes. John approaches it with the same caution he would display approaching an IED. Sherlock puffs his chest and speaks as a teacher directing his student. “We have approximately one and a half hours. I am going to teach you to swim."

John's face goes slack. “Sherlock… No.”

“No?”

"No."

Sherlock puts on his most expressive pout. “But you haven’t even looked in the bag.”

Without breaking eye-contact, John digs into the bag and pulls out a pair of swimming trunks not unlike Sherlock’s own, except for their pattern. He shakes them in the air for emphasis. “This is not happening.”

“They’re your size,” Sherlock explains. “I think they'll look rather fetching. If you don't like the banana-print they have other patterns available. I nearly went for a pair with palm trees and coconuts, if that’s more—”

John drops them back into the bag and crosses his arms. “First of all, I never want to know how you knew what my size was.”

“That’s easy. Using any easily-measured edge or surface as a point of reference—”

“And secondly,” he adds, jerking his head towards the Tiki bar, “that sign over there says the pool’s closed. Bad luck! No swimming today.” His cheeks pull tight with satisfaction, but his victory is short-lived. Sherlock rolls his eyes.

“I know what it says, I put it there. I told them the water was contaminated with Cryptosporidium.”

John's face pales. “You… contaminated the pool? On purpose?”

“I didn’t do anything to it.” Sherlock clicks his tongue disapprovingly. “Do keep up, dear. I just _told_ them it was contaminated so that we could have the place to ourselves for a while. People will believe anything they’re told with the right stolen uniform and an authoritative voice. Now, hurry up,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “Put the trunks on and come over here. We're wasting time.”

John grabs the bag and tosses it towards him. “I’m going back to my room. Have fun up here by yourself.”

He turns to leave. Before he can step away, Sherlock lunges and grabs him by the upper arms. The element of surprise gives him the advantage and he begins walking them backwards, dragging John, fully clothed, towards the pool’s edge.

It takes a few seconds for his intent to sink in. When it does, John digs his heels into the floor. His forehead creases with growing concern. “Sherlock.” His eyes grow impossibly wide. “Sherlock, don’t.” He shoves against Sherlock’s chest, but his grip is like a vice, and every effort to push him away only bringing John helplessly along with it. “I’m warning you, Sherlock. Don’t you _bloody_ dare, I'm not joking!”

Sherlock grins. All pretence falls by the wayside as John’s hands pry at his grip and his feet shuffle along the wet-slick floor. Sherlock takes another long step back. “We’re going into the pool. Your only choice is this: Trunks, or clothes. You have five seconds to decide, or I will make the decision for you.”

“I’m not going in—” They take another step back, and John glances down at their feet in alarm. Sherlock’s heels are dangling off the edge. John’s voice climbs comically high as Sherlock sticks one foot out over the water in an exaggerated gesture. “Sherlock, for Christ’s sake! My phone!”

He plunges a hand into John’s shorts and John’s legs go rigid. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as Sherlock pulls the device free of his pocket. “There,” he says, flinging the phone safely onto the deckchair with his clothes and towel. John senses this as his chance to escape and twists his body, trying to make a run for it. Sherlock quickly recovers, capturing him in a bear-hug from behind. Giggling breathlessly from the struggle, he holds on tight as John squirms against him.

“Fuck off!” John growls. “I said I don’t want to go in the bloody pool!”

It almost seems cruel, but he may not get another chance at this and if he lets it go now John will never let himself fall for it again. It's tempting to at least allow him time to ease in to the idea. However, his incessant wriggling is having an effect he did not forsee, but probably should have. Being mostly unclothed, there is an uncomfortable amount of friction going on.

Panicking a little himself, and keen to avoid the mutual embarrassment, Sherlock decides to speed things along before he's forced to abandon the idea entirely. “Last chance, John. Trunks or clothes?”

His answer is as expected. “Neither!”

“Stubborn as an ox,” Sherlock sighs. “Clothes it is, then.”

John lets out a pitiful yelp as they tip backwards, gravity doing the rest.

They hit the water with a crash. His arms locked around John, Sherlock sinks until his backside touches the tiles at the bottom of the pool, then quickly finds his feet and lifts them both to standing. Only when his head breaks the surface of the water again does he hear the litany of half-crazed curses tumbling out of John’s mouth.

“You arse!” he screeches, his voice choked. Water runs over his face in rivulets and sprays from his lips. “You prick! You absolute fucking prat, let go of me! Let go!”

His elbow plows into Sherlock’s ribs, making him release John with a grunt. John’s eyes are wild as he swings again, tripping over himself in a clumsy, water-logged advance. Sherlock moon-hops away from him, chuckling through the pain. “It’s okay, John. It’s shallow here. See? It’s totally safe.”

“Safe? _Safe_?” John cries, splashing water at him. “Nowhere’s bloody safe with you, you lunatic! I could have drowned!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I had you,” he insists, but John lunges for him again. Sherlock is ready for it and dodges with ease. “Okay! Okay, I’m sorry. Would you just. Stop, John. You’ll never hit me like that.” He keeps a safe distance as John awkwardly drags himself through the water under the weight of his drenched clothes.

“Wanna bet?” John growls, reaching out for him and grabbing nothing but air. Sherlock bounces easy circles around him in the water. “I will get you for this. Mark my words. In here or out there, either way, you’re in big trouble. This is _not on_.”

Sherlock laughs freely. “You’ll have to get me here. We both know I can outrun you on dry land. Come on, you can do better than that!”

He flicks at the water, teasing in and out of the range of John's clumsy fury. He makes it appear random, but is tracking their positions carefully, baiting him onward in just the right way. And John, oblivious, beelines for him without noticing that Sherlock is no longer bouncing along the bottom of the pool. When he lunges forward for another swing, his feet find nothing beneath him.

John sinks beneath the surface with a sharp gurgle. Overtaken by instinct, he panics like a deer crashing through a school window. Feral and unseeing, he flails wildly beneath the water, but Sherlock is there in a flash to lift him up. When John re-emerges, he coughs out a mouthful of water.

"John, stay calm—"

John doesn't seem to hear him. His arms lock around Sherlock like a vice, hindering his ability to float, and he starts trying to climb Sherlock’s frame like a jungle gym. It takes him completely by surprise, and Sherlock finds himself forced down beneath the surface. Alarm bells ring in his head and he kicks hard with his legs, but John is an anchor. He can barely get his face above the surface for a gasp of air, and then his nose floods with another rush of chlorinated water. He pries at John’s arms, trying to force them away from their crushing grip around his neck, but John won’t let go of him. 

He re-emerges again and hears John pleading above him. “Get me out,” he cries. “Fuck, get me out!”

His chest constricts with guilt and fear. He has never seen John lose control of himself like this. He seems intent on drowning them both, overtaken by his body's drowning response. He might just succeed if Sherlock doesn't snap him out of it soon. Adrenaline surging through his veins, he manages to encircle John and lock his arms safely to his sides, keeping John from grabbing at him again but forcing his legs to do all of the work. Summoning his strength, Sherlock manages to bring them above the surface. Their gasps fill the air.

“John, watch me,” he urges, meaning to demonstrate how to tread the water, but at the sound of his voice John's blue eyes snap to his like a pair of magnets, and the fear in them is unlike anything Sherlock has ever seen. His usually brave, stalwart face is void of any sense of familiarity. John is no longer a man, but an animal fighting for survival. Sherlock's mind reels from it.

What has he done?

To see him now, you would think John expected Sherlock to kill him any second. There is no trust in his eyes, nor even anger. Only pure, primal fear. It's so unlike anything Sherlock has come to associate with him that for a moment his thoughts are frozen in shock, unable to reconcile this pitiful creature with the man he thought he knew. This wasn't supposed to happen. He thought that once they were in the pool, John would realise there was no danger after all and take to it like he does any other task set before him, with courage and determination. More than that, John was supposed to _trust_ him.

But it's clear now that Sherlock has pushed him beyond his limits. He would be lucky if John ever trusts him again after this. One thing is clear: He is in no fit state to be given lessons; Sherlock needs to get him out of the pool immediately.

“Alright,” Sherlock murmurs. “It’s okay. You’re okay, John. Let’s get you out.” He manages to pull them over towards a metal ladder, the nearest point of escape, and helps to stabilise John’s weight as he drags himself out. Sherlock climbs out after him and trots over to the chairs to grab a dry towel.

On his feet, John is rigid and motionless, seething between clenched teeth. Water trickles from his clothes and drips from his fingers, nose, chin. His chest heaves with great, unsteady breaths, and for long minutes, he doesn’t even open his eyes. His whole frame vibrates from the lingering rage and adrenaline that must still be coursing through his blood. His neck pulses with visible pressure.

At a loss, and feeling he should be doing something comforting at this point, Sherlock gingerly tries to wipe John's face dry with the towel. John flinches away as if burned by it.

“Don’t,” he hisses. He pins Sherlock with a glare so fiery it could melt the sun itself. Gone is the admiration, the warmth, the unquestioning trust in John’s eyes; only a red mist of anger and betrayal remain. He may actually throw a punch. If he does, Sherlock knows he deserves it. John's tortured expression cuts itself deep into him, etching itself into his memory and promising to refuse deletion later on. If he should even try. Sherlock bites his lip, overcome by regret, and braces himself. 

But John’s fists remain clenched by his sides. Sherlock swallows around the tightness in his throat and offers the towel in a meek apology. “John, I didn’t mean to—”

John snatches the towel from his grip and storms away, leaving his phone, and Sherlock, abandoned by the pool.


	8. Chapter 8

As his feet squelch through the corridors, a single, sick thought churns in John’s mind: Regret.

This was a stupid idea from the start. He should never have come along. What was he thinking? Him, spending an entire fortnight on a cruise ship, miles from dry land? How did he ever think he could cope like this, let alone be of any use on the case? No wonder Sherlock is being even _more_ of an arsehole than usual.

And yet, he’d been growing acclimatised to the gentle swaying of the decks. Slowly, but surely. Mercifully, the nausea had begun to settle after the first few hours on board, and as long as he didn’t catch too many glimpses of the outside world he’d been relatively stable. He could almost pretend he was back in Menorca and this was just some kind of fully-enclosed tourist resort.

But no, Sherlock just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Even now, the padding of bare feet tails him like an incessant stalker. He probably has no idea what a thoughtless and self-serving stunt he just pulled, probably thinks this is an overreaction to something harmless. He knows just what Sherlock wants to say: _It was just a swimming pool, John. You’re being a child_. He just doesn’t get it, and John isn’t about to stop and explain it to him. He wouldn’t listen, anyway; Sherlock is always right, all the time, about everything.

Heads turn at the spectacle of the drowned man and his tormentor as they paint the carpets a darker shade of blue. John has never felt so humiliated in his life.

“John, would you just listen—”

“Don’t talk to me,” he warns, fists clenching so tight that his nails dig into the skin. He can take a lot of abuse, but this has been a step too far even for him. Sherlock doggedly follows him all the way back to his room, hovering behind him even as he fights through the soggy material of his shorts to untangle his room key. By some happy miracle, the electronic key still works. John throws the door closed behind him, imagining for a brief but satisfying second that it gave Sherlock the smack in the face he deserves.

Either way, Sherlock got off lucky. He’d come this close to throwing a punch. Only the look on Sherlock’s face stayed his hand at the last second, a suggestion that he did, in fact, recognise something of the pain he’d inflicted. Good. Let him stew on it for a while. Maybe he’ll think twice next time he tries something so outrageously stupid.

The stink of chlorine lingers around long after he washes himself off and changes into a dry set of clothes. It’s making him feel sick again. Or maybe that’s just the humiliation. He curses to himself, that old familiar anxiety crawling its way back up his spine. The tiny room no longer feels so welcoming; the illusion of security is shattered.

An hour later, John reluctantly forces himself back onto his feet. Moping around in his room isn’t going to do any good. Bucking up his courage, he steps out into the hallway— and nearly trips over Sherlock, still sitting outside his door. John crosses his arms, glancing up and down the empty hall. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?”

Sherlock looks up at him in surprise. His curly hair lay stuck to his forehead in a wild mess. His skin has dried by now, but his soggy trunks still cling to his hips. His expression smooths into a mask of stoicism. “Not until the shifts change again.”

John leans against the doorframe. Sherlock’s dark eyes watch him expectantly. Neither of them speak for several minutes, until finally, John decides it’s enough. He clears his throat, his voice exuding a calm that disguises the rumbling storm in his head. “You know what you did was wrong.”

“Yes. John, I—”

John holds up a finger. “Wait. Just let me speak for a bit. I know you were just trying to help. And if I’m honest, I think part of me must have wanted this. I’ve been avoiding it for so long, I haven’t the first idea how to properly deal with it. I knew you’d been planning something. I could have just carried on avoiding you this whole trip. But instead I rushed up there, even after seeing on the map what you were leading me towards.

“But Sherlock, I am bloody angry. At myself, too. Maybe even moreso. I just… I hate being brought low by something so pathetic. This isn’t a game to me, and I don’t appreciate you turning it into one.”

“I wasn’t trying to.” Slowly, Sherlock climbs to his feet. “You were struggling. I thought I could help.”

“I was dealing with it just fine on my own. I was actually starting to feel okay here. But you have to control everything. You have to fix everything, even if you don’t know the first thing about what it is you’re trying to fix.” He rubs his brow, trying to massage away his pent-up tension. “it's not that I don't appreciate what you were trying to do. But the way you went about it was… insane! You just made it worse.”

At this, Sherlock’s expression hardens. He lifts his chin and stands taller on his feet. But the confident front is betrayed by the wavering tension in his voice, which comes out a fraction of an octave higher than his usual tone. “Respectfully, John, I don’t think you were dealing with it at all,” he says.

John forces a smile. “No?”

He leans forward, forcing John to tilt his head up. This is a dangerous game he’s playing. “In fact, you’ve done nothing but run from it since the start, haven’t you?” Sherlock accuses. John’s hands flex. Seemingly oblivious to the fire threatening to engulf him, Sherlock carries on.

“Not once during our association have you ever declined to pursue a case to its fullest end. That alone was my first clue that something was different about this one. I must admit, I couldn’t quite figure out what the issue was at first, but once I had ruled out the impossible only the improbable remained: It seems that somehow, in all your years and despite your Army training you never learnt to swim. Such an unlikely outcome suggests you went out of your way to avoid it. Avoidance suggests fear, ergo you fear being anywhere near water.

“That much I had worked out, but I still didn’t realise the full extent of it. Not until you became ill at the gangway and wanted to escape the second you stepped off the dock. I concluded that this was a serious issue that couldn’t be ignored until later. It needed to be addressed as soon as possible, both for the sake of your wellbeing and the success of the mission.”

“Yeah. See, there’s the problem,” John interjects. “You decided all this on your own. Not once did you bother to ask me how I felt or how I wanted to handle it.”

“What would have been the point?” His brow creases in confusion. “Two outcomes: You either accept or decline. If you declined, we would get nowhere and the problem would persist. If you accepted, then how is that any different? What changes?”

A laugh startles out of him. “What changes? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe me getting time to prepare myself, so I don’t end up thinking I’m going to bloody drown in a swimming pool?”

Sherlock’s eyes roll. “You weren’t in any danger. I knew what I was doing.”

John has to look away, at the floor. Anywhere but directly at that self-assured, condescending face. Sherlock still doesn’t get it. There’s no point even listening to this. He turns to leave, but Sherlock grabs him by the arm. John tries to shake him off, but his grip only tightens. “John, please just listen—”

“I’m done listening. You’ve got nothing worth hearing.”

“I’m not wrong, John. You weren’t coping. Maybe you couldn’t see it, but _I did_. You avoided windows, you got drunk. You flirted around.”

“Oh for God’s sake, not this again…”

“That isn’t why I’m bringing it up now!” Sherlock moves in front of him, gripping him by both shoulders, pinning him with his eyes. John stares at him. He feels on the verge of something. Either hitting him, or… he doesn’t know. Only that it takes all his willpower to keep his arms by his sides and his feet planted firm. “Don’t you see?” Sherlock urges, shaking him. “These were all coping mechanisms. Distractions. How long have you been running from this? How many years? You’re _still_ running.”

“Sherlock.” John swallows, his pulse hammering in his throat. “Let go, please.”

“Not until you admit it.” His fingertips press into John’s skin, as if expecting him to try to wrestle out of the hold. He might try it. “You need to stop avoiding this and deal with it. I need you.” He bites his lip, a flash of regret in his eyes. “I need you at your best on this case.”

“Is that it?” he asks. “Is that the whole of it?”

He hesitates. “No.” His voice loses its hardness, seeming to quaver at its edges, matching the gentle back-and-forth of his eyes. “John, you know that I… You’re my best friend. You can’t expect me to sit idly by and watch you suffer. Is that controlling?”

If there’s any sarcasm or manipulation in the words, it’s invisible. John wants to believe it. But Sherlock is a master manipulator, and he’s seen this act before. This wouldn’t be the first time he trotted out a perfect facsimile of sentiment in order to sway someone to his side. The question is, how much does he trust him at his word? After what he pulled earlier— not as much as he might do.

Sherlock releases him with a shaky sigh. “I’m not very good at this.”

He needs time. Time to sort through the mess of his wounded ego and figure out Sherlock’s honest intentions. He’s in no state to be forgiving anything just yet. And besides… he’s not technically wrong.

“You’re right. I have been running,” he says. Sherlock’s eyes brighten hopefully, but John is quick to temper his expectations. “That doesn’t mean I’m ready to let you or anyone else go there again just yet. Just… Give me a little space. I need to cool down and think about it.”

He can see the argument dancing at the threshold of Sherlock’s lips, held back by a conscious effort. At least he’s trying. However, a question manages to slip free. “How is it you never learnt to swim? You went through basic training.”

Perhaps it would be cruel to leave such a curious mind totally without context. John decides to humour him. “I, ah, knew the guy running the papers. He owed me a favour and passed me, no questions asked.”

“Oh.” His head cocks to the side. “And it never came up during a tour?”

“In Afghanistan?” John laughs dryly. “Funnily enough, no.”

Sherlock nods, peering down at his bare feet. Some of the tension ebbs from the air between them. When he looks back up his expression is soft, almost vulnerable. A single drop of liquid falls from his hair and tracks down his cheek. “Exposure therapy,” he says. “I found it in one of your medical books. It’s supposed to be shocking at first, but I didn’t imagine you would be quite so affected. If I had known…”

John rubs his eyes. That explains a lot. “There’s a lot more nuance to exposure therapy than simply dumping the person in a tank of their worst fears, you know.”

His lip slips from between the nervous chew of his teeth. “Yes, I’m getting that idea now.”

“It’s like if I were to arrange a get-together in 221B for your next birthday without warning you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Ten, twenty people crowded in our little flat, laughing and dancing, sticking party hats on you and taking pictures?”

A brief but satisfying look of horror passes over his face. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“No, I wouldn’t. So you won’t do anything like this again, will you?”

“No.”

He gestures down the hall. “Then, shall we?”

“Are you sure? If you need more time…”

“No, I’m alright. Come on. We can talk about it more later. I know it looks like I’m still avoiding this, but dwelling on it right now isn’t going to do me any favours. Just trust me on this.” He turns to leave, but spins around and points a stern finger between Sherlock’s widening eyes. “Oh, and if you so much as _splash_ me with a puddle, there will be Hell to pay. Got it?”

He’s only half-joking. But the look on Sherlock’s face is worth it. He raises his palms as if staring into the eyes of an angry lion. “No splashing,” he promises.


	9. Chapter 9

_Anything? -SH_

It’s the first thing John has heard from Sherlock all day. After yesterday’s blunder, they’ve been keeping a distance from each other. John isn’t ready to fully trust him again yet, and Sherlock is probably scared of slipping up again by sheer accident.

_Nope. No talk of any missing persons yet, at least. You?_

_No sign. On the plus side, I found the morgue. -SH_

John frowns down at his phone. The _what_?

“Bad news?” a sweet feminine voice asks, pulling his attention away from his phone.

“Hm?” He glances across at her. The waitress, Mindy, sits opposite him at a table in the café where she first served him four days ago. Of the crewmembers John has spoken to, Mindy has been the most receptive to his questions. She’s also an unapologetic flirt; her advances on him have been relentless. “Oh, this? Not exactly. Puzzling is more like it. But that’s nothing unusual.”

_What morgue??_

She twirls a lock of hair around her finger, smiling at him coquettishly. “Your friend, I take it? Mr Tall-Dark-and-Moody?”

John chuckles. “Yeah, that’s the one.” He glances up again. “You’ve seen him?”

“Here and there, poking around. I can see why you like him.”

He doesn’t miss the innuendo in her tone. Christ, even complete strangers think they’re an item. “He’s a good friend,” he says, keen to dispel the notion. “We work well together.”

_Every ship has a morgue. Where else would they keep the bodies? -SH_

“That all?” Mindy’s expression takes on a coy, teasing air. “The way he looks at you, though. I wonder what he’d say about it.”

John meets her eyes. When did she even see them together? “He’d probably say some very choice words and then sulk over it for a few days. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“And how about the way you look at _him_?” she presses. The question strikes a nerve. Maybe there have been lingering glances on occasion. An odd spark in the air, moments of tense silence after a chase, when the criminal is caught and the only sound in their ears is their heaving breaths and wheezing, disbelieving laughter. But it’s the cases that get Sherlock’s heart pumping and his adrenaline flowing. Of course there’s going to be odd moments; that’s just the nature of the beast.

He’s tried to capture these so-called ‘looks’ that Sherlock purportedly gives him on the sly. If he does it at all, he’s very good at hiding it. And as for himself? He doesn’t do that.

Does he really do that?

Mindy’s devilish eyes linger on him and John turns back to his phone, in part to avoid her increasingly uncomfortable questions, but also curious as to how Sherlock managed to find one of his favourite rooms in the most unlikely setting.

_‘Bodies’? How often do you think people get murdered on cruises?_

Mindy catches a shift in his expression. Her laugh is musical. She reaches across to squeeze his hand, a conspiratorial look in her eye. “Well in that case, he wouldn’t mind if we spent a little more time together, would he?” She leans in, tapping a nail on the glass tabletop. “My contract is ending today. I’ll be heading back to England after this trip. If any handsome Army vets happened to come up to my room tonight for a few private drinks, well, he wouldn’t be breaking any rules.”

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a plastic card, sliding it across the table. “My room key,” she explains, dark eyelashes winking at him. “I have a few errands to run first, but I’ll be up in an hour or two. I’ll even sneak some bubbly out of the kitchens for us. One night, Johnny. I promise you’ll enjoy yourself.”

She’s really serious about this. Something about her tells him she usually gets what she wants. He’s not quite sure whether he should be cheering his good fortune, or insulted by what was clearly a sexual ambush. Speech failing him, all he can do is stare at her. How is he supposed to make rational decisions when there’s an imbalance being created in the blood flow between his brain and another region entirely?

And he’d bet money that she knows exactly what effect it was having on him. He can see it in her eyes; the way she watches him, it’s too calculating. Her words too precise. This is a practised art, and she’s a grandmaster at seduction. But for as good as the performance it is, he can tell that it’s well rehearsed. She probably does this sort of thing on every contract she takes: Picks one sad, lonely, sexually frustrated guy, lures him in with the promise of a night to remember. Takes what she wants from him — most likely his wallet — while he’s too blissed out to care.

He sees it now, and her spontaneity and dogged pursuit of him loses its alluring shine. He can’t help but compare it to the way Sherlock does the same thing. Not for sex, but as a means to invite him along on his cases. Sherlock has a manipulative streak a mile wide, and John has seen his acting skills first hand. He does it to everyone, and John is no exception. He knows just which of John’s buttons to press every time. The difference is that Sherlock hardly needs to do it; John willingly follows him anyway.

If pressed, he’d struggle to pinpoint the reason why he feels such a strong desire to stay close by Sherlock’s side. To protect and support him, obviously. To help him with the Work, not that Sherlock typically needs it. But there’s another reason, and he thinks it has something to do with the way the act seems to fall away whenever John tells him ‘ _yes_ ’. Sherlock’s manipulations may be self-serving, just like Mindy’s probably are, but it’s clear from the way he flushes up with pleasure that he wants nothing else from John but John himself; he gains nothing from having John by his side than the simple pleasure of his company and companionship.

And right now, John realises, there’s really nowhere else he’d rather be.

He’s still figuring out a polite way of declining Mindy’s offer when she rises to her feet, pushing her long hair over her shoulders. He clears his throat, mustering his tact— best to let her down lightly.

“Listen, Mindy. It’s been lovely getting to know you, but I—”

His sentence is abruptly cut off by a pair of plush, painted lips pressed against his own. It takes his brain a few long seconds to catch up to reality. Then her tongue snakes its way into his mouth, and he pulls away with a gasp, clambering to his feet so fast that his chair screeches against the polished floor.

Mindy seems more amused by this than anything else. Red-faced and flustered, John tries to hand back her room key. She declines. “The offer’s open. Think it over, Johnny. If you change your mind, just drop the key off with one of the crew. Tell them you found it on the floor, they won’t ask questions.”

With a parting smile, she turns to leave. John sinks back into his chair, eyes dancing around the room, hoping to God that Sherlock didn’t happen to be snooping around here at that exact moment. He can just picture the epic sulk that would ensue. It’s a relief when he recalls their text conversation from a few minutes ago, realising that wherever the morgue is, he can be pretty sure it isn’t anywhere near where they’re serving the food.

John turns the key over in his palm. The offer is undeniably tempting. Watching Mindy leave, he almost misses the man who emerges from the kitchen area and follows her out of the café.

John’s blood runs cold. That’s him.

Light skinned, muscular build, clean-shaven head— that _has_ to be him!

John bolts out of his seat, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling with adrenaline. Had he been here the whole time, working in the kitchens? How had John never spotted him? Guilt stabs at him, cold and visceral, to think that it was only pure luck that he looked up in time. Mindy’s disappearance would never have seemed suspicious.

By the time he reaches the exit, both Mindy and the bald-headed man — Mikhail, presumably — have disappeared from his view. Cursing under his breath, he darts to the end of the hall, ignoring puzzled looks and shoving aside anyone in his path.

The deck opens up into a circular atrium overlooking a huge shopping mall. Above and below, multiple decks overlook a ground level dotted with tables and chairs. Crowds stroll through the shops, lit from above by rows of cable lights that hang suspended from the glass ceiling. Peering over the balcony railing, John catches sight of Mindy as she descends a wide staircase towards the busy food court below. The bald man is close behind her. He rudely pushes past an old couple in his hurry to keep pace, and John’s heart skips, more certain than ever of the danger Mindy is in.

Pulling out his phone, John manages to snap a photo as he circles around to the stairway, texting the image to Sherlock as he races down to the floor below. The lingering traces of his motion sickness are forgotten, pressed to the back of his mind by the urgency of stopping what’s about to happen. He’s at the bottom of the stairs when his phone pings with a reply.

_John, that’s him. Don’t lose him! Tell me where you’re heading, I’ll catch up. -SH_

He’s never been good at moving and texting at the same time. He fumbles with his phone as Mindy leads them across the court, past an arcade and down another set of stairs. God knows how Sherlock manages to text one-handed, when John can’t even get a sentence out without bumping into someone.

A pair of kids barrel out of the arcade in front of him, yelling and chasing each other with plastic guns. John’s fingers itch for the heavy weight of his own Sig, but it would have been impossible to smuggle through security at the dock. There’s an uncomfortable uncertainty in chasing down a dangerous suspect while unarmed, but he’ll have to make do. If push comes to shove, he knows he can be just as dangerous with his bare fists.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he barely catches sight of the bald man disappearing through a door labelled ‘Staff Only’. Mindy can’t be too far ahead of him.

_Deck 7. They’ve gone through a staff door._

_Stay with them. -SH_

John grits his teeth and peeks his head through the door, feeling all too conspicuous. If someone spots him now, he’ll get kicked out by security and lose the trail. He can’t let that happen. He glances both ways before his eyes alight on Mindy and the bald man twenty metres ahead of him.

Mindy pauses, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She exits through a bulkhead door. John cringes, knowing that the poor girl has just cornered herself. Mikhail pauses outside the same door, turning to glance back down the hall, and John’s training kicks in just in time for him to duck out of sight, heart thumping wildly in his chest.

His phone vibrates in his pocket. He daren’t pull it out, straining to listen down the hall for approaching footsteps. He doesn’t hear anything, only the ever-present hum of the ship’s engines and the distant static of the parting waves outside. After a minute, the shrill metallic creak of the bulkhead door echoes towards him. John waits another breath before he steals a look around the corner, praying he isn’t about to rush out into a trap.

Mikhail is gone. The hall is empty, so John moves up, pressing himself against the door that Mindy and her stalker passed through moments ago. It’s impossible to hear anything outside except the rushing of water; for all he knows, Mikhail might be standing right outside the door, but he has no choice. He has to follow. Mindy could be being attacked at this very moment.

Slowly, John grips the handle and inches the door open, wincing at the squeal of its rusted hinges.

His eyes adjust gradually to the surroundings. It’s dark. The sun vanished below the horizon hours ago, leaving the satin sky to fill with stars. Now the ship provides its own illumination, but this section of the deck is covered and secluded, cast in deep, oppressive shadows— a perfect spot for a kidnapper to ambush an unsuspecting victim. A cold breeze filters through the gap in the door, raising his skin in goosebumps. Seeing nobody in the immediate vicinity, John steps out onto the deck, every muscle tense and coiled tight, ready to be sprung.

Boards creak underfoot as he creeps onto the promenade, ignoring the vast expanse of black water beyond the sheer cliff of the ship’s outer hull. Overhead, amidst a tangle of pristine ropes and hooks, a row of enormous orange lifeboats jostle and sway on heavy-duty cranes. Now he knows why this whole section is off-limits; a couple of drunk civilians could easily cause a lot of trouble around equipment like this.

John glues himself to the shadows as he advances until, at last, he spots her. Mindy stands at the far end of the small cubby, an unlit cigarette caught between her fingers. She’s facing his way, but doesn’t seem to notice him on account of who stands between them.

Mikhail is breathing heavily, his bald head glistening with a sheen of sweat. There’s something sharp clutched in his meaty hand— a pen knife, perhaps, or something he took from the kitchens. He brandishes it threateningly at her. Christ, he must have had this moment planned for days.

Fortunately for the would-be victim, John is an incorrigible flirt— and there’s the first and undoubtedly only time that sad fact will ever come to his advantage. She got lucky. If he hadn’t been here, nobody would have spotted the danger before it was too late. Sherlock definitely would never have given her a second glance.

Steeling his nerves, John steps boldly out of the shadows. “Petrov. Put it down, and step away from her. Now.”

Mikhail whirls around, and for the first time gives John a good look at his face. It can be summed up in one word: Grizzled. He’s tall, almost as tall as Sherlock, and powerfully built; his pale blue crew uniform does little to hide the muscles straining beneath his skin. The thick tendons in his neck look like roots holding up a tree stump.

Hard, grey eyes look John up and down, clearly assessing his strength. Mikhail must not think much of him, because his mouth pulls into a slow, ugly grin, and when he speaks, his voice is low and hostile, with a treacle-thick accent. “This is not place for passenger. This is staff only. Go back to public area, nosey little man, or I call security.”

Unfazed, John takes another step forward. He levels a cool gaze at the cocky Russian, who clearly believes intimidation will scare his shorter opponent away without a fight. He has no idea who he’s dealing with. “Good idea,” John says. “When they get here, we can tell them all about your little side business, selling people off to your trafficking buddies in Austria. Oh yeah, I know all about you. I’m sure the _policía_ would like a chat about that, too.”

Mikhail bursts into laughter, a guttural roar of noise that makes Mindy flinch and drop her cigarette. “You talk rubbish! Get out of here, _gryaznaya_ _sobaka_. This none of your business.”

The air is thick with tension. At any moment Mikhail could attack either of them. John stands defenceless, and on the wrong side of the standoff to be any help. He has to find some way of defusing this before it gets any worse. He raises a hand, palm forward. “I’ll leave. Right after she does.” He risks a glance past Mikhail. “You alright, Mindy?”

She presses her lips together and nods, her eyes wide with fear. It’s little comfort that she may have been taken to the morgue if nobody was here to stop this from happening. Mikhail could have easily taken Sherlock by surprise as well. How long would it have taken for John to realise Sherlock wasn’t just ignoring his texts? The thought chills him to the core.

Mikhail gestures threateningly with the knife. “You leave now, or I make you regret it.”

“Not from there, you won’t.” John takes another bold step forward. The fool is clearly underestimating him based on their height difference. An amateur mistake. John stands battle-ready and evenly balanced, ready to strike. He’s close enough now that he could reach out and snatch the knife away, but patience is key. He must wait for the right opening.

John’s fought guys like this before; big men who get all cocky and confident as long as they’re hiding behind a weapon they barely know how to use. Just looking at his grip on that blade, John can tell he’s never had to seriously fight with it. Probably relies more on his size to intimidate and overpower his victims with sheer brute force. You couldn’t pin the word ‘finesse’ to this guy with a piece of paper and a thumb tack.

Strategies bloom at the forefront of John’s mind as he prepares for a fight; a shove here, a right-hook there, sweep the leg— he’ll go down easy. “Let her past you, and we’ll pretend none of this happened, yeah?”

Mikhail regards him with suspicion. “I came here for pleasant chat with work mate. Only thing that happened was nosey passenger who trespasses in staff area.”

“If that’s how you want to tell it, let’s run with that. Let her go.”

John’s phone vibrates in his pocket again, reminding him that Sherlock is still trying to catch up. Shit— what was the last direction he gave? A little backup would be handy right about now. He can’t drop his guard to read his phone, much less answer it.

Mikhail wavers hesitantly, sweat trickling down his neck. His eyes flick over John again, and perhaps this time, he picks up on the subtle clues of his body language, because his lips curl into a sneer and he steps aside, keeping the knife raised. “Fine then,” he rumbles, placing his back to the wall. He ducks his head towards Mindy. “Go back to quarters. Maybe I find you later for another… chat.”

The air hums with distant music and the rush of waves, but there’s a tense silence on the deck between them. At first, Mindy seems rooted in place. John can’t blame her; the man looks like an ex-con. But she swallows her fear, sidling around Mikhail, hands trembling. When John reaches out and takes her hand, a quiet sob escapes her. He draws her behind his back, placing himself in a defencive position between them.

Good; now, if Mikhail still wants her, he’ll have to go through John, and he’s not about to make that easy.

Mikhail pushes away from the wall and John keeps his eyes fixed on him for the slightest provocation. Behind him, Mindy’s footsteps recede. “Listen to me, Mindy.” He tries for calm and authoritative; he doesn’t want to scare her any more than she already is, but if she’s in shock, it’s going to take some force to get her moving. “Go call security. Tell them to come down here immediately. Preferably with handcuffs, if they’ve got any.”

His request goes unanswered. “Mindy?”

He’s caught completely by surprise when something is shoved over his head from behind. The world goes dark, sounds muffled by a thick layer of cloth. His thoughts reel in panic as he reaches up to claw at the obstruction, only to encounter not one, but two pairs of hands grabbing at him.

“Over! Push him over!”

It’s not Mikhail’s voice. To John’s horror, Mindy is the body grappling his back, holding the bag over his head as Mikhail shoves him roughly against the metal handrail. The bar slams into his midriff, knocking the air out of his lungs with a strangled gasp. He swings blindly, grabbing at anything he can, before a knee pummels into his groin and he cries out, his legs collapsing beneath him.

“What of the other one?” Mikhail growls as they’re hauling John to his feet. “We need the other. This one is just lackey.”

Pain ricocheting up his spine, John can do little more than struggle weakly in their combined grip. He tries calling for help, but thick fingers close around his throat, cutting off the sound. Just then, an odd chime sounds from somewhere very close.

It takes him a few seconds to realise it’s his phone, but the sound is one he’s never heard before. It repeats itself, a quiet tinkling of bells, and it’s a discordant harmony in the midst of this violent, life-or-death struggle, enough to tickle a disbelieving laugh from his heaving lungs. Life’s too fucking strange, sometimes.

But he’s not the only one who notices it. A slim hand digs into his trousers, and his bemusement sharpens into a stab of fear as he feels his phone lifted away, stealing away his only chance at summoning Sherlock to his aid. “Apparently, we won’t have to wait long,” Mindy remarks. “Someone is tracing his location.”

His blood chills. _God, no_. Is that what Sherlock did on the plane— install a tracking device on his phone? Couldn’t he at least have put it on silent, for Christ's sake? Now they'll be ready for him. He’ll be walking right into a trap! The kick of adrenaline sends a renewed burst of energy surging through his limbs. He twists in Mikhail’s grip, managing to wrench an arm free, and swinging his fist over his shoulder he makes solid contact with the man’s face. Mikhail grunts and stumbles back, but doesn’t release him. A second later, John’s nose breaks with a sickening crack beneath a well-placed punch.

Stars explode behind his eyelids and a strong taste of iron coats the back of his throat. His head spins, suffering for lack of oxygen as the bag is tightened around his neck. He’s lifted clean off his feet without warning.

“Bye Johnny! Sorry we couldn’t get better acquainted. But to be honest, you were never really my type.”

And then he’s plummeting through the dark. His heart climbs into his throat as gravity accelerates him. For a brief second, his dizzy mind imagines a voice shouting his name, before the impact of the water drowns out everything.


	10. Chapter 10

“JOHN!”

He arrives a second too late. Sherlock barrels through the bulkhead door just in time to see a struggling figure be tipped over the metal rail by a pair of assailants. In disbelief, he slams himself chest-first into the rail, reaching over and grasping at the air as John disappears through the briny mist. His breath punches out of his lungs.

_No!_

His jaw clenches painfully. He’s locked in place, unable to breathe. Can’t even think. John is invisible in the water, lost to the darkness and being left behind at 22 knots per hour. Behind him, Mikhail’s voice cuts through the static in his ears.

“You English, all so stupid.” His laughter comes like a rumble of approaching thunder. “At least nosey friend tried to be sneaky. Put up a good fight. You just run out and not even care about man with knife at your back.”

Sherlock whirls around to face Mikhail and his unknown accomplice. The Russian fits the profile he’d been searching for, almost like every ugly criminal stereotype was based on his template, right down to the heavy set of his jaw and every line carved into his snide expression. But the other? It is rare, but Sherlock has heard of the occasional female trafficker. He’s just never seen one before now. Except for the smug look on her face, nothing would have tipped him off that she and Mikhail would be working together.

Perhaps if he had seen her around more, had time to study her behaviour from afar. But it appears that she chose to attach herself to John. Somehow she knew about them, about their mission, and has been planning her actions accordingly. It dawns on him with a sharp inhale: She, not Mikhail, must have been the mastermind behind this all along.

A slim blade gleams in Mikhail’s fisted grip, but the danger barely registers. His thoughts snap back to John, on the vision of him falling. He has minutes— no, seconds to act, to save him.

“Let me call for help,” he pleads, his voice straining to stay level. “He can’t swim. He’ll drown if you don’t let me get help!”

Mikhail’s mouth pulls into an ugly, victorious grin. “Good. Now is your turn, _pidoraz inorodniy._ ”

His hands twitch at his sides, caught between action and inaction, lost between the desire to fly past them and attempt to reach help but knowing they would block his escape that very instant.

“Please let me save him,” he tries again, appealing desperately to whatever might exist of Mikhail’s humanity. “You don’t want to become murderers, do you? That’s not part of the job. If you let me call for help, I swear to you we’ll leave quietly. You won’t hear from us again, I give you my word.”

The woman cackles with laughter, her eyes gleaming with unshielded malice. “You must think we’re real stupid, curly. No, I know who you are. I know how smart you _think_ you are. You’re not going anywhere, Sherlock Holmes.” She tips her head to the side, pushing her bottom lip out in an exaggerated display. “Sorry about your beau. You regret not fucking him when you had the chance? Too late now.”

Sherlock swallows back the rising bile in his throat. These people are animals; it’s clear they’ll give him no quarter. He’s cornered and outnumbered. His only options: Fight, or flight. He could take Mikhail on, armed as he is with a weapon he clearly doesn’t know how to use effectively. But isn’t that what John must have thought, too? Of the two of them, John is the better fighter. He couldn’t have missed it.

It’s the woman, then— her presence complicates matters. Over Mikhail’s shoulder, she watches Sherlock with equally vicious intent. If he tries to scrap with Mikhail, she’ll be right there to trip him up or stab him in the back.

Mikhail’s arm jerks forward. Sherlock swiftly dodges with a boxer’s grace, saving himself from a strike that would have cut clean across his neck. But another swipe follows right after the first, the metal of the blade singing in the air. It passes an inch from his face and sends him stumbling off-balance. Mikhail presses the advantage and knocks him against the deck wall, slamming into him with his full weight and knocking the wind out of his chest.

Gasping, Sherlock claws at Mikhail’s sweat-streaked face while a pair of heavy fists tries to get a grip on his collar and choke him with it. Mikhail boxes him in with his thighs, but Sherlock manages to wriggle away and escape under his arm, only to catch a fist out of nowhere that sends him sprawling backward.

The punch gave a sickening crack. As he clambering to his feet, he sees the woman cringing and shaking out her broken fist. He has but a split-second to think as Mikhail closes in again. Facing a hopeless battle, the decision is easy to make.

He hauls himself over the metal rail.

There’s a beat of silence as he falls.

Then he jerks to, his lungs burning, throat flooded with water. He begins kicking instinctively. The impact must have knocked him out, albeit briefly. Sounds are muted, his vision cloudy. Even his own gurgles sound muffled as they rippled up and away from him in a cascade of bubbles.

Glancing above him, he spots the distorted shape of the Aurora as it rumbles along the surface, its broad hull bulging beneath the waterline like the belly of an enormous whale. In the bottomless black waters surrounding him, it’s his only point of reference. He kicks towards it, towards the surface, spurred on by the screaming protests of his lungs, and just as his chest begins to heave with pain he breaks the surface, coughing up lungfuls of seawater and dragging in great heaving gasps of air.

The second he’s able to, he calls out with all his strength. “John!”

The sound rings out over the water. Scanning the vicinity, he sees nothing but reflected starlight. Rolling waves slap against his face unrelentingly, each hit making him deaf and blind for precious seconds when he might have heard a cry for help, or seen the tell-tale splash of a man drowning. But he sees and hears nothing. Nothing but blackness, and the furious pounding of his own blood in his ears.

The Aurora’s rumbling engines and electric lights shrink into the distance, until his splashing and panting breaths sound loud and isolated in his ears. He calls out again. And again. John is nowhere to be seen. He calls until his voice breaks, but his voice is swallowed into the night and nothing answers it. He’s aware of a sharp ache in his side, something squeezing and pulling, but it’s not a priority right now— John is out here somewhere, alone. Drowning. Or drowned already.

He swims randomly, hopelessly in any direction. And then he sees it.

Something pale reaches above the water twenty meters away from his current position, give or take. It’s gone a second later, but it’s all he needed. He plunges forward into a front crawl, arms arcing out of the water, legs kicking furiously behind him. The ache in his torso becomes a searing pain that makes his limbs jerk and stars bloom in his vision. He doesn’t stop. His soaked clothes drag against his efforts, sapping the energy from rapidly tiring muscles, but he pushes through it, quickly closing the distance.

Urgency spikes when a distraught face gasps above the water a mere meter away. As soon as his arms come around John’s waist, the man clings onto him with an iron grip.

“John!” The relief is so powerful, slamming into him with such force that it wrenches a sob from his throat. Not too late after all. He lifts John as high as he can out of the water, sacrificing his own buoyancy so that John can cough and vomit the saltwater from his lungs.

John’s fingers dig into his shoulders painfully, but he’s too happy to care. He fights his way back to the surface, clutching John’s warm body to him protectively. “You’re alright,” he urges, cupping John’s face and wiping the water from his eyes. “John, I’m here, I’ve got you. You’re alright.”

Blood is trickling from John’s nostrils and his nose looks crooked. “The ship,” he croaks, his voice hoarse and nasally. “Is it coming back?”

“I don’t think anybody saw us go over.”

It was perhaps the wrong thing to say at that moment. “You didn’t let someone know?!” His limbs stiffen and his weight shifts, pressing Sherlock’s head beneath the water again. He kicks harder, resurfacing with a groan and spitting the water from his mouth. He has to keep John calm— at this rate he’ll drown them both, just like he almost did in the pool.

“They didn’t exactly give me an opportunity. Kick your legs, John.”

“Your phone— Do you have your phone?”

“What? Why?”

“Can’t you call someone?” he asks, quickly clamping his mouth shut again, his clogged nose pointed towards the sky.

Sherlock feels his eyes widen in disbelief. “Where the hell do you think we are?” he asks. “For one, do you imagine the reception is particularly good out here? On a T-Mobile network?”

John groans. “No, I mean— Don’t you have any fancy gadgets on it or something? Any way to contact Mycroft?”

He scoffs. “God, no. Not even if it _was_ waterproof, which is flaw number two in the idea.” He shifts his grip around John’s middle, attempting to give them both more room to kick. “The only Mycroft-related intrusion I’ve allowed anywhere near us is that tracking app I installed on yours.”

“I fucking knew it!” John exclaims, slapping his hand into the water and nearly upsetting their equilibrium in the process. “That’s what tipped them off you were coming. It made a bloody noise!”

Sherlock groans. “That’s the last time I rely on him for anything important.”

“It might be, at this rate.” John huffs a tense breath. “Sherlock…”

He can feel John slipping through his grip. But John isn’t getting heavier— his own arms are losing their strength. The additional strain is pulling relentlessly at the muscles at his flank, where a white-hot pain is pulsing with heat through his midriff. It takes a great deal of effort to keep his face neutral. “Kick your legs, John,” he urges again, gritting his teeth.

“What?”

“Just kick! Not too fast; get a rhythm going.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“You’re going to exhaust the both of us,” he says, his strength ebbing. “You need to tread water so you can float on your own.”

John’s face pales. His arms around Sherlock’s neck tighten almost to the point of choking him— so much for keeping him calm. “Don’t let me go,” he begs. “I swear to God. Promise you won’t let go, Sherlock.”

“I won’t,” he promises, prying at John’s limbs to loosen them, “but I can’t keep us both up. You need to help me.”

Tentatively, John begins kicking. Too quickly at first, but then his pace settles with more confidence. His weight lightens, and soon his arms begin to relax, instincts no longer teetering on the knife-edge of survival. Sherlock’s hands stay clutched tight around his middle, even as it quickly becomes obvious that John should probably be the one supporting _him_. Idling around on the ship, it was easier to ignore his growing fatigue. Now his remaining energy is being rapidly drained just from the effort to stay afloat. The blooming pain at his side isn’t helping.

He twists to watch the Aurora shrinking into the horizon, already so distant that its engines can no longer be heard. It continues to sail straight and true on its preordained route, oblivious to the loss of two of its human cargo.

“Fuck,” John mutters. “It’s not coming back. What are we going to do?” He looks at Sherlock expectantly, eyes bright and focused, awaiting instruction; a familiar, endearing expression, full of trust, so welcome after the frightening look he’d given before when all reason and rational sense had seemed to abandon him. This is the real John, the one who knows wholeheartedly that no matter how deep the waters seem, somehow Sherlock will always find a way back to dry land.

That’s usually a safe assumption. But right now they’re alone with no way to call for help. It’s the pitch black of night in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, and nobody on board the Aurora will notice their absence until the ship docks at Naples. That’s ten hours away, at least. The search and rescue will take even longer.

The truth, too painful to voice in the face of John’s trusting expression, catches in his throat. He swallows it back. “We’ll swim.”

It feels like passing the baton of survival as he demonstrates how to move his arms through the water, to skate them across the water’s surface like a paddle; fingers closed and outstretched, angled just-so to provide stabilisation and lift. John watches, attentive, but his arms stay locked around Sherlock’s shoulders, as if he doesn’t trust that his own body isn’t made of stone and won’t sink just as readily as one.

But Sherlock patiently coaxes one of John’s hands free, and he begins to mimic the motion. Doing so eases the pressure slightly. “Good, just like that. Now try it with both hands.”

John shoots him a worried look. “Sherlock, I can’t…”

“You won’t sink. Trust me.”

His eyes say what both of them are thinking: Sherlock hasn’t exactly earned trustworthy status recently. Nevertheless, John tilts his chin up and mutters something that sounds like a prayer. Then the weight of him lifts away from his shoulders entirely. For the first few seconds, John’s limbs swish wildly back and forth, frothing the water around him, but soon he finds a gentler rhythm, the movement tightening into something smooth and controlled. The deep lines of worry above his nose loosen incrementally, reflexive fear giving way to a quiet awe, and even joy at his new accomplishment.

It’s a greater relief than Sherlock lets on. After what he’d done, he never would have imagined seeing John like this. He thought he’d ruined that possibility. Looking at him now, he can’t help feeling a burst of pride. “John, you’re doing it.”

“I’m bloody doing it!” His breathless giggle ringing out across the dark. “Alright, I think I can do this. What next?”

 _What next_ , indeed. Their chances of survival will hinge on how quickly they can swim to shore. Teaching him a beginner technique won’t do; John will have to learn something more advanced. “Front crawl,” he announces, checking his waterlogged watch. “It is currently 11:24PM…ish. That puts us about seventy kilometres out. Given a generous estimate of, let’s say… two miles per hour, it should only take twenty-one hours of continuous swimming to reach land.”

“Uh, okay,” John’s tone wavers uncertainly. “That sounds rough.”

“It won’t be easy. But you have the required strength and stamina to make it,” he says, bluffing as much confidence as he can muster. “Now, watch carefully. This is a rather advanced technique.”

John listens as Sherlock mechanically explains to him the Freestyle stroke; how the arms must arc out of the water, reaching ahead and pulling back towards the hip in alternating movements; how the legs are held straight behind, toes pointed in a flutter kick. But demonstrating it is arduous. Every stretch of his arms over his head sends a fresh, hot iron of agony shooting up towards his chest, and every kick of his legs causes pain to arc through his pelvis like an electric shock.

He can barely stand to swim more than a few meters before his posture collapses and he is unable to mask the sound of misery that claws its way out of his throat.

Behind him, John’s voice climbs to cover the distance the brief swim put between them. “Sherlock? You alright?”

“Fine,” he forces out. His hand seeks the wound at his side, and finds it: A slim, neat puncture, perfectly in line with his kidney. The area burns where the salt water is seeping inside. More worryingly however, is how warm the surrounding waters feel to his sea-chilled fingers. Judging by the spread of it he must be losing a significant amount of blood.

“I’m not an idiot,” John calls to him. “Are you injured? Bad fall, or something else?”

“Swim over here and I’ll tell you,” he calls back, concealing his alarm. It’s an odd promise, but it seems to spurn John into movement. He pitches forward into something that resembles doggy paddle more than it does a front crawl. His head remains stubbornly above the surface, disrupting the flow of his strokes, and his feet crash loudly against the water, leaving cascades of foam in his wake. Sherlock tosses his head in disapproval.

“You’re doing it wrong. Your face has to go under the water. You’re going to exhaust yourself like that.”

John stops a meter from him, wriggling himself upright with effort. “How the bloody hell am I supposed to breath?”

“Turn your head.”

He tries. The second his nose goes under, his arms start to flail in panic. Sprays of water arc overhead until he manages to pull himself upright again, sputtering for air. “I can’t.”

“Try again and time it with your arms,” Sherlock urges. He has to be patient. Exude confidence. John needs it. But he feels nothing of the sort. A creeping fear is beginning to take root as he watches John struggle without proper instruction, not to mention with a broken nose that is only adding to his stress, relegated to gulping the air with his mouth in a manner that leaves him wheezing and breathless.

That Sherlock himself has no hope of surviving, he feels, is a bygone conclusion. But if John can’t pick up this technique then he won’t make it back, either. That John should die out here like this, facing his worst fears— Sherlock can’t bear the thought of it. Knowing he’s to blame for it makes his heart clench in self-loathing.

John tries again, but gets no further than before; his drowning response kicks in too quickly, his coordination falling apart before he can get used to the feeling of having his face fully submerged. “I can’t,” he complains, snorting and pinching his nose to clear it. The move makes him gasp in pain. “Sherlock, this is too hard. Isn’t there an easier way?”

He rolls his eyes. “Your face is going to get wet regardless of technique.”

“This is bollocks!” John cries, his voice climbing with frustration. “How are you even supposed to see where you’re going? People do this for _fun_?”

“People do far weirder things for fun,” Sherlock replies. “Just look at us. We put our lives on the line to solve crimes. Don’t try to tell me we do it just so Graham’s lot can put their feet up for an afternoon.”

John laughs at that; a fond, breathless sound. He paddles awkwardly the rest of the way back over to him, reaching out to take Sherlock’s hand. As they draw close, his smile fades. Even he must be sensing their dwindling prospects of survival. “Really though, isn’t there anything?”

Sherlock considers his remaining options carefully. At this point, anything would be better than nothing. “There is the backstroke,” he suggests. “It’s a beginner’s technique. Physically quite effortless, but it’s very slow. It’ll add hours to my estimate.”

“Show me,” John says. When Sherlock moves to demonstrate, John pulls him back by the arm. “I meant your injury. Show me where.”

It catches him off-guard. Denial hovers at his lips, but John is once again being too observant at the worst possible time. “It’s superficial,” he says, attempting to wave it away with a half-truth. “Mikhail caught me with the knife. Just stings a bit, that’s all.”

John isn’t dissuaded. “Show me where.” Reluctantly, Sherlock guides his hand to his side, hissing when John’s fingers pass over the torn skin and flesh. John gets a grave look on his face. “This backstroke, think you’ll be able to manage it?”

“For a while.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll backstroke all bloody day if that’s what it takes. You need to get to a hospital.”

He isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. The noise that erupts could be either. Perhaps John didn’t hear him, or just doesn’t want to acknowledge the hopelessness of it. He leans back in the water and allows his feet to drift up level with his shoulders and hips. John looks briefly alarmed, as if seeing Sherlock as a dead fish floating belly-up in a glass bowl. “You can float like this,” he explains. “Just tilt back. Spread your arms. Natural buoyancy does the rest.”

John doesn’t let go of his hand as he leans back, his legs rising up until his toes peek out of the water. He must have kicked his shoes off at some point. Good idea; Sherlock follows suit. Free of their extra bulk, his feet float marginally higher, leaving his wet toes to chill in the night air.

Small waves lap at his cheeks and occasionally spills across his mouth, but his noses remains beyond the water’s reach, and that seems safe enough for John nod his readiness. Sherlock then walks him through a beginner version of the backstroke, arms scooping the water in time with broad scissor-kicks, like those of a frog. It’s simple enough that Sherlock manages it despite the dwindling sensation in his legs. John takes to it with relative ease.

“And now we just do this for a day or two.”

“No problem,” John remarks. It’s the last thing either of them says for a long time, both conserving their energy for the long swim ahead.

High above their heads, the stars track lazily across the sky. An hour passes. Maybe two hours. Sherlock doesn’t know. His watch stopped working as soon as he entered the water, but the horizon is still dark and the sea still stretches forever around them, but it feels like they’ve been swimming for days already. John sticks close by his side, matches his lethargic pace stroke for stroke, but they both know he could be miles ahead by now. Sherlock’s stomach twists with a renewed sense of dread. With John’s excellent stamina, he might still have a chance, but not while he’s dragging dead weight behind him.

He wrenches his hand out of John’s grip. “This will be faster with both hands free,” he breathes, hoping that John will buy the lie. “Let me swim behind you. Slipstream like fish and jet fighters do.”

John’s face turns to him, brimming with concern. “Will you be alright?”

“Of course. It’ll be easier.”

John hesitates. “Say something if you run into trouble, okay?”

“Don’t worry.”

With one last look, John swims on ahead, allowing Sherlock to fall into step behind him.

John will never forgive him for this. As he pretends to swim easier, pushing himself beyond his own strength to match John’s pace, his heart races with fear. He nearly changes his mind about the whole idea, but his throat tightens before the words can slip out. Never has he felt such shame as he does now, abusing that same steadfast loyalty that’s endured so much of a beating over the years. His cheeks burn with it, with all the guilt and regret of the thousands of little moments he ever took their friendship for granted. He came so close to destroying John’s trust in him before and here he is now, doing it on purpose. Hoping for it. Hoping to give John something to fuel his abandonment. He needs it. If it will make the following days easier, allow him to let go and leave Sherlock behind, then it will be worth the pain of a hundred stabs to the kidneys and everything else that he deserves.

John wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Sherlock’s stubborn, reckless pursuit of Mikhail. If he makes it back at all, it will be insufficient as a token of apology, but at least it will be the most selfless way he could ever express it.

He doesn’t fall back immediately. John is smart; he calls out periodically, seeking a reply, just as Sherlock knew he would. But as the night wears on, it happens less and less. When he can give no more, Sherlock allows himself to drift behind, until the sounds of John’s arms and legs swooshing through the water grows ever more distant. John doesn’t notice, can’t see behind him to realise that he’s not being followed anymore.

Sherlock gazes at the stars. An entire arm of the Milky Way is silently watching over him from an unfathomable distance. There’s something oddly comforting about that. John once sat him down with a children’s book about the universe, pointing out pictures of different types of planets, nebulae, and stars. He thought it was trite at the time; a pointless waste of memory space, but somehow it stuck with him. He listened all night to John’s soft voice prattling on about concepts and phenomena that would never affect their daily lives, because there’s nobody else in the entire world who would even think to do that; to try and teach him something, to weather his attitude, his complaints. Despite himself, by the end of the evening Sherlock was rapt, and John had the warmest, most pleased with himself expression he’d ever seen.

The memory puts a smile on his damp face. The stars will know why he did this, and only they will hear the one thing he always wished he could have had the bravery to say by the end of it all. If there was ever an appropriate time to give up, to admit defeat, now feels right.


	11. Chapter 11

This isn’t so difficult. It’s not easy, but floating on his back, his face to the night sky, it feels like they’re making steady progress. His heartbeat pounds in time with the percussive rhythm of his limbs through the water, a steady swooshing that takes his mind off the reality of their predicament. As long as he doesn’t get stuck thinking about how deep it is beneath the surface, he’s okay. He can stay calm. He can _do_ this.

Talk is sparse once they get going, but he calls out to Sherlock every hour, or what he approximates is an hour, and Sherlock’s strained voice picks up in response. It’s a rasping, pitiful sound, but it’s always nearby. Sherlock’s plan to slipstream in his wake appears to be working, letting John really put his back into it. He cuts through the water despite the drag of his wet clothes and the cold creeping into his muscles. It’s given him hope. They can make it.

It was impossible from that brief touch and no visual inspection to get a proper impression of how deep the cut is. Sherlock assured him it was superficial, and he can only hope to God that he wasn’t just trying to spare John the worry. As soon as the light comes up, he should take a closer look at it; all this movement could be aggravating a more serious internal injury.

His eyes drifted shut hours ago and feel lightly stuck that way now, crusted with seawater and sore from sleeplessness. It’s nearing morning when he first notices something amiss; he calls, and for the first time, Sherlock doesn’t answer.

His mind has grown lethargic and sluggish, and the lack of a response doesn’t immediately concern him. He’s grown used to the silence. The sky, empty and cloudless, is a dead audience to the sea’s waves as they quietly bob up and down, carrying him along like a piece of flotsam. And he hasn’t seen, or heard, a single screaming gull, nor the distant engines of any passing ships.

It’s easy to be hypnotised by it, this lack of sensory input. It reminds him a bit of one of those sensory deprivation chambers: Coffin-sized metal tanks big enough for a single occupant to climb inside, windowless and filled with water. Once the cover is closed, the inside is plunged into total darkness and silence, with gravity a mere afterthought. Supposedly, people find this therapeutic in small doses.

He was in med-school at the time, and his mates there once dared him to spend ten minutes inside of one. He only lasted three before his mind began to turn on itself. In a panic, he begged to be let out, beating his fists on the metal walls, but the gits kept him in there while they had a good laugh at his expense. It was Mike Stamford who eventually unlocked the chamber and pulled him out, his face set with concern. He hadn’t been there, but must have been passing the room and heard the commotion coming from inside.

John found out who his real friends were that day. The experience wasn’t the beginning of his hydrophobia, but it sure piled on the damage.

He tries not to think of it now. As long as he has strength in his limbs, he’s in no danger of drowning. Floating on his back doesn’t even take effort. He had to admit that Sherlock was right; swimming isn’t so difficult once you get the hang of it. He wets his parched throat and calls out again, louder this time. Maybe he just didn’t hear it.

“Sherlock? Still with me?”

Nothing. He orients himself upright in the water, blinking open his eyes where the lashes have dried and matted together. It takes him a moment to get used to treading water like this again after so many hours on his back, but he manages to keep his mouth and nose above the waterline. The horizon has an umber glow that warms the edges of his view, promising a sunrise that should chase the cold from his shivering limbs and grant him some much needed visibility.

He looks around. Where there should be a dark head of wet curls trailing along behind him, there is only empty water glistening in the pre-dawn light. Sherlock is nowhere to be seen. His heart lurches to the side.

“Sherlock!?”

He’s completely alone. _Oh, God_. How long ago did he last hear Sherlock’s voice call back to him? It suddenly feels like an eternity ago. The sea is terribly, horribly quiet. How did he not notice it until now? How could he not tell when two sets of splashing arms diminished to just his own? A wave of cold panic threatens to overcome him, but he roughly shoves it aside, throwing himself back in the direction he came from. All ideas of preserving his strength are abandoned as he calls out, backstroking furiously, lungs burning with exertion. He doesn’t bother to mask the distress in his voice. The thought of Sherlock slipping silently beneath the waves without John even noticing makes him sicker than all the days he’d spent getting used to the swaying of the decks beneath his feet.

The longer he swims, the brighter the eastern sky glows, and the scratchier his voice becomes. Soon he can barely make any noise with it at all. Despair claws at him, but he would rather exhaust himself swimming in circles than give up. His eyes scan in every direction, and in the light of the rising sun he spots a small, dark shape floating in the distance.

It’s Sherlock. _Thank Christ_.

It takes long minutes to make his way over there. Every muscle in his body burns with built-up lactic acid and begs for a moment’s relief, but he pushes through it, ignoring the pain. He can’t see where he’s going, but eventually his head bumps against an outstretched leg and he struggles upright, reaching immediately to support Sherlock’s head above the water.

Sherlock’s face is pale, his eyes lightly closed. Swallowing his dread, John cups a hand beneath his flaring nostrils and is relieved when he feels the warm gust of his breath. The tightness in his brow relaxes. _Not dead_.

John slips his arms under Sherlock’s armpits and jostles him in an awkward attempt to rouse him. “Sherlock? Come on, wake up. Say something.”

Sherlock’s narrow eyes peel themselves open, unfocused and dim. As soon as they recognise him, they fall shut again beneath a furrowed brow. His cracked lips part on an exhale. “You idiot,” he murmurs.

“ _Me_ , the idiot?” John wheezes. “For God’s sake, why didn’t you say something? You scared the shit out of me!” He gathers Sherlock to him, draping those limp arms loosely around his neck and allowing Sherlock’s head to rest against his shoulder. “Don’t ever do that again, you hear me? I thought I’d bloody lost you.”

Sherlock makes a weak protest, but barely seems to have the strength to move. He beats a fist between John’s shoulderblades. “Leave me here, you fool.”

“Not another word out of you,” he chokes out, barely keeping them both supported. Treading water for two is more difficult than he’d imagined; even Sherlock’s light weight is cumbersome, like trying to hold onto a bag of rocks. His legs are stiff and numbing as he works them past the point of endurance. Sherlock makes an attempt to support his own weight, but his movements are uncoordinated and weak, only serving to unbalance them further, and the waves begin to lap over their mouths and ears.

John curses himself for not keeping a closer eye on him these past several days. Perhaps if he was better fed and hydrated he wouldn’t be in such a state; as it is, there’s no telling how long he’ll last once the sun rises and begins to beat down on them. At this rate, they may not even make it that far.

He can’t believe Sherlock would do that— just let him swim on, completely oblivious. Couldn’t he put himself in John’s shoes for one second and realise what his life would have been like, if he’d made it back to shore only to discover he’d left his best friend behind? At the same time, John should have expected it. Sherlock is nothing if not ruthlessly logical in his reasoning. He’d worked out that John had the best chance of survival without him, but he didn’t stop to consider whether surviving under those conditions would even be worth it to John.

It doesn’t matter now; he isn’t letting Sherlock out of his sight again. But floating like this isn’t going to last— they’re rapidly losing steam. John eases them back, pulling Sherlock over him and allowing him to lay supported by John’s chest, and it’s almost by necessity that John has to begin swimming like this, pinned underneath him and dragging him along. Without the movement, there wouldn’t be enough lift to keep him high enough to breathe, every upstroke plunging his ears and nose back under, sending pangs of fearful adrenaline down his spine.

Sherlock trembles above him. “You’re an idiot,” he complains. “You won’t get anywhere like this. Leave me, for God’s sake.”

“Don’t,” John warns, raising his voice in the dry gaps between each stroke. “Don’t even try… that on me. I won’t leave you here.”

“Why?” he snaps. “Do you think you’re being noble? Hoping to score extra points with the man in the sky once you keel over? Don’t be stupid, John. You’re throwing your life away for no—”

His voice catches on a sharp cry that sends a bolt of fear through John’s heart. His body curls on itself, forcing John to stop swimming and tighten his arms around Sherlock’s body, holding him close. Sherlock turns himself around and burrows his face into the crook of John’s neck, stifling another moan. “Please,” he begs. His tense, shortened breaths brush at John’s collarbone. “You don’t want… to watch this… happen.”

John can’t take it any more. If he listens to much more of this he’s going to start believing it himself, and that’s just not in his nature. Not as a man, and not as a trained, battle-hardened medic. Sherlock may have given up already, but this isn’t over until the last breath leaves his lungs.

He lifts Sherlock’s head to look at him properly. Sherlock’s eyes are scrunched tightly shut, teeth chattering with pain. John brushes the wet hair from his forehead and rests their heads together, lowering his voice to a hush. “You’re right, I don’t, so here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to stop talking like that, Sherlock, and listen to me now. Either we both stay here, or we both make it back to shore. Either way nobody’s being left behind. So how about it— are you gonna help me swim, or do I have to carry you the whole way?”

Sherlock’s eyes open, focusing slowly, and whatever expression they contain is unreadable. They look so drained in this light. The sky is brightening, warming the salt breeze in the air, and his eyes look almost grey. The shimmering greens and bright flecks of gold that John has always found fascinating now appear dull and lifeless, like a pair of unpolished gems dirtied by the ravages of the sea. But despite this, something in their depths glows with a warmth he can’t look away from.

They seem caught in the moment. Some unspoken question hovers at Sherlock’s lips, and suddenly John can’t look away from that, either. Finally Sherlock’s gaze breaks away. Laying his head back down, he releases a quiet sigh. “John, what would you do… for someone you cared about more than yourself? Wouldn’t you die for them?”

“You know I would,” he says. They both know. But this is the first time either of them have openly acknowledged it, how far they would go, what they would sacrifice to keep each other safe. As for why? John isn’t even sure he could answer that. There is an answer, but it scares him to even think about. Instead, he says: “Now’s not the time for it,” and reassures him with a squeeze.

Sherlock makes a frustrated sound. “Damn you. If it were you in my place—”

“I’d die for _anyone_ who needed saving. But for you? I’d do much more than that,” he replies. “I’d live.”

His head brushes back and forth against John’s collar. “I can’t.”

“You think I care about carrying on living in a world that doesn’t have you in it, you mad sod?” He hugs Sherlock’s trembling body closer to him, his finger disappearing into the soggy mess of dark curls. He presses a kiss to the back of Sherlock’s head. “Don’t be daft. It wouldn’t be worth it.”

Sherlock’s chest rumbles with dismal laughter. “That’s the most… ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Is it?”

His face pulls back, revealing a fresh gleam in his eyes. “There’s no value in my existence. What we do doesn’t even make a dent in the criminal underworld. Life will go on, just as it always has.”

“That’s not the point though, is it?”

He shakes his head again, a sad smile fighting past the grimace at his lips. “Nobody will miss me, John. I made sure of that. There has never been an excess of people wanting to call themselves a ‘friend of Sherlock Holmes’. I never wanted that kind of life. I only…” His eyes dance fitfully back and forth between John’s. “I just want…”

“I’m not talking about anyone else, I’m talking about you and me.” The words slip out of their own accord, surprising even himself. “Sherlock, don’t you realise you’re my whole bloody world?”

Sherlock’s eyes squeeze shut, pressing out the moisture that had been building along their rims. John is stunned. He’s seen Sherlock cry stage tears before but never genuine, emotional ones. This is a first. The tears track down his face, and John can’t resist an overwhelming urge to reach out and gently swipe his thumbs across Sherlock’s harsh, pale cheekbones.

“Sherlock—”

He recoils from the touch. Terrified of letting him get too far, John’s hands fly out and pull him back. “What are you doing?”

“Being sick,” he warns, seconds before a frothy mix of seawater and bile gurgles up from his stomach with a wet cough.

John moves in swiftly to support him. _Not tears of emotion after all_ , John thinks grimly. If only they were. Sherlock writhes again, expelling little else but a miserable groan. The vomiting is a bad sign, confirming John’s most grave suspicions about his injury: That it was deep enough to pierce his kidney. If he’s not already in renal failure, he will be soon.

They can’t delay any longer. Not even waiting for Sherlock to stop convulsing, John musters his remaining strength and gets moving.

 

*******

 

The first time his head dipped under, the rush of water through his nose jolted him awake and sent a flash of adrenaline to his legs, spurring them into action. When it happened again, half an hour later, he had to cough up a cold lungful of water.

Next time, he might not wake at all. Exhaustion is pulling him under. With nothing but miles of emptiness beneath his feet, he can’t carry on much longer.

Sherlock hasn’t stirred in a while.

The sun is bright and high overhead, burning his hands where they remain locked onto Sherlock’s flanks, propping him up on the surface with all that he has left to give. Sherlock must be burning, too, but there’s nothing he can do about it, there’s nothing to shield him with. The seas have warmed up during the course of the morning but he can barely feel it. His whole body is numb from exhaustion.

His muscles have nothing else to give. John might as well be a lump of marble that was carved out of some hillside and dumped into the sea, staying afloat through sheer power of will. God only knows how his legs are still moving. Forward momentum has become impossible now; he can only float near the surface, shaded beneath Sherlock’s motionless body, suppressing his drowning reflex as best he can when it’s not enough to keep his face above the waves.

A final sputter of energy lifts his flaring nostrils out of the water for one last, desperate breath. Then he goes under.

It’s dark.

 _This is it_ , he thinks. It shouldn’t be dark again, not in the space of seconds. He must have fallen asleep, and now he’s drowning and he can’t even open his eyes. But then he feels it— a deep, pulsing pressure from above, thrumming through the water, pounding at his ears. Is he… still awake? Rising adrenaline lends him the strength to struggle back to the surface. Between the waves that lap over his eyes and obscure his fading vision, he glimpses a massive object hovering above them. His heart leaps into his throat. _A helicopter_!

It’s almost too miraculous to be true. They’ve been found. He doesn’t dare close his eyes again; if this is a dream, he doesn't want to wake from it. The chopper’s blades cut through the air as it descends towards them, whipping the sea into a violent spray of salt and brine and making his ears ring with the sound of it. He watches the harness as it lowers, accompanied by a rescuer in bright orange gear. Sherlock goes up first, hanging limp and unconscious, reddened with sunburn. Watching him ascend, John’s eyes sting with fresh tears. There’s no more room for doubt in his mind: If he lives, then so will Sherlock. Nobody left behind.

They’re going to make it. _Together._


	12. Chapter 12

He’s floating.

“—in VF, get those clothes off him, now!”

“Use the towels. Get him dry.”

He doesn’t know where. Can’t open his eyes.

“The floor’s soaked. Move him away, and get me some gloves.”

He wants to speak. _Where’s John?_

“Stay over here, okay? We need to shock him.”

“Pads in place.”

“He’s still wet—”

“It’ll have to do. Clear!”

His ears buzz. The air crackles with electricity. He smells burning ozone.

A voice says something he can’t hear.

More crackling. The buzzing gets louder.

“Please,” someone whispers distantly.

Another buzz.

“Please, Sherlock…”

_John._

He feels himself slipping. His stomach drops out.

“It’s no good. Call it.”

“No!”

He’s falling.

“Don’t stop! What are you doing?!”

Picking up speed.

“I’m sorry, mate.”

“Keep going, damn it!”

His chest aches.

“Sir, I understand you're upset, but it won't—”

“Give me those!”

The sound in his ears climbs to a shrill, piercing noise.

“Stop him!”

_John,_

“You’re soaked, it’s too dangerous!”

_I always thought_

“Clear!”

_That there would be_

“Please, listen—!”

_More time_

“I said CLEAR!”

 

 

…

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind readers, do let me know if the formatting of this chapter is too annoying, I will change it if it's unpopular. <3


	13. Chapter 13

John stares through the glass.

Half a cup of drab hospital coffee sits like oil in his stomach, heavy and sour on the back of his tongue. His feet ache. He’s been standing for ages, but he doesn’t want to sit down. Too many hours sat in plastic chairs over the past three days. Waiting.

Hoping.

The ward is bright and airy and nothing at all like how he feels watching Sherlock languish in that room, surrounded by the equipment that, for now, is keeping him alive.

Down the hall, the automatic doors glide open with a soft noise. It sets his nerves on edge.

He waits.

A hand touches him on the shoulder. “Doctor Watson.”

“Mycroft.”

“Any news?”

He must have heard that same question a hundred times over the past three days. His tongue swipes across his bottom lip. “I wish you wouldn’t keep asking that.”

Mycroft’s grim reflection appears beside him in the window. “You are not the only one concerned for him.”

John eyes the loosened tie around his neck; it’s unusual to see Mycroft Holmes anything less than immaculately dressed. He really must be worried. “I know,” he offers. “Sorry. I just don’t like saying it.”

“I understand.”

“What about you?” he asks, glancing aside. “You still looking for…?”

Mycroft forces a smile. “Not to worry. We have it waiting for him when he is ready.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“How are your hands?”

“Oh, they’re, um. Yeah, healing well,” he says, glancing at them. The skin beneath his bandages is sore and itchy, but he’s trying not to aggravate them. It’s a good thing he has strong self-control.

They fall into an awkward silence. Mycroft’s presence has always unnerved him, but in a hospital ward it almost feels like having the Grim Reaper standing at his shoulder. They listen to the muffled sound of sheets being folded in the neighbouring room, clean fabric whispering through the air. The previous occupant passed away suddenly in the night.

“You could have offered,” John says offhandedly, because it’s been bothering him for days and he didn’t quite have the courage or the energy to say it before now. “I did. They wouldn’t take mine because I’m not a match.”

Mycroft looks at him, puzzled. “You would give up one of your own organs?”

John meets his eyes in the glass. “You wouldn’t?”

His shoulder lifts in a perfect imitation of his brother. “As a last resort. But why sacrifice when there are viable alternatives? He will do fine. The donor was carefully selected, I assure you.”

He doesn’t ask if the donation was voluntary. Mycroft may not be the self-sacrificing type, but John wouldn’t put it past him to find other ways around the problem. The less he knows about where that kidney came from, the better.

“I’m going inside for a bit.”

“Will you be staying again?” Mycroft asks. John nods. “Very well. Anthea will be along with a fresh set of clothes for you in a few hours. I must return to work, but I would appreciate a call as soon as anything changes.”

John gives the same automatic assurances he has done for the past three nights, and then enters the room.

He can tell immediately from the heart monitor beeping quietly next to Sherlock’s bed that there has been no change in his condition today. But John checks his vitals anyway, makes sure every tube and needle is secure, and that his bandages are still clean. He refills a cup of water that Sherlock won’t wake to drink, and sets a ‘Get Well Soon’ card on the window ledge next to the others. This one’s from Molly. It has a sad-looking teddybear with a bandaged head on the front. Close enough, he supposes.

Finally there’s nothing else he can do to avoid looking at him. Fingering the crisp edges of the bed sheets, John gathers his resolve and lifts his eyes to where Sherlock’s head lies half-swallowed by his pillow.

He appears asleep, as if John could simply reach out and nudge him awake, except he would get no response if he tried. He looks so vulnerable lying there, wires trailing from him, tethering him to the bed like vines as they draw his blood and push it through the dialysis machine. His face and arms are peeling from sunburn. It looks irritated; John has to restrain himself from the urge to soothe it, and he doesn’t know if it’s his nature as a medic, a friend, or something else entirely, but the nurses couldn’t pry him away for more than five minutes when they first arrived. They initially mistook him for Sherlock’s spouse. He wanted to do everything, monitor everything, even though he just ended up getting in the way. Eventually they handed off the duty of changing his bandages just to give John something useful to do.

He lifts the patient chart out of its tray and leafs through the slim papers. Sherlock is stable. The dialysis is working, propping up his system in the absence of the kidney that was deeply punctured by Mikhail’s knife. He’d lost a lot of blood in the water, and the intrusion of saltwater into his body through the wound was cause for concern, but he got lucky; there’s no infection, no sepsis. His body is surprisingly resilient for all that he neglects its needs. The doctors think that he may have lasted even longer if he wasn’t on the brink of dehydration and hypoglycemia when they were tossed over-board.

By the time they were rescued, he was dying not only of his wound and blood loss, but of his generally weakened state. At some point he slipped below the threshold of what his heart could endure and went into ventricular fibrillation. For how long, they don’t know. If it was more than a few minutes he could be brain-dead.

But John won’t accept that. He didn’t give up then, and he isn’t going to give up now. He’ll wait the rest of his life if he has to, just as long as Sherlock comes back to him.

His fingers smooth along each other over their coarse wrappings. Second degree electrical burns on both hands, but it was worth it— he brought Sherlock back from the brink when everybody else had given up on him. Now the only question that remains is whether or not it was too late. Whether he’ll still be himself, if he even wakes up at all.


	14. Chapter 14

Awareness ebbs and flows.

Seconds, hours pass. Days. He doesn’t know, can’t tell one disparate stretch of time from the next. Time has no meaning. It was lost somewhere on the open sea, and now he drifts, unmoored, in its meaninglessness.

He’s not sure whether he’s still inhabiting his body, or floating somewhere above it. Brief, unknown sensations and half-remembered dreams tease at the edges of his mind. A flicker of light, and something touches his skin. Sharp— a familiar prick in his arm. He doesn’t so much feel it as observe it from afar. A chill spreads up his arm until it reaches his heart, and from there sends icy tendrils unfurling along every vessel in his body, numbing him, smoothing out his thoughts, turning his mind liquid and featureless.

Morphine. His oldest friend.

He feels himself being swallowed by an enormous, yawning void. He used to wonder if this is what death feels like: Descending into the quiet depths, only to float momentarily back to the surface, a piece of cork bobbing in a bathtub as the water drains away. Where it would end up, he didn’t much care at the time. He doesn’t care now either, but for a very different reason: He wants to live.

When the curtain of numbness pulls back again, he realises he’s still breathing. So he rests. It’s comfortable here, lying on something dry and solid and warm. The air smells freshly bleached, like their kitchen at home after John has spent the day scrubbing every surface until they gleam. Sometimes there’s an urge to open his eyes, to test the bounds of whatever reality he finds himself in. But it’s so easy to ignore. He’d rather drift for a while longer. He’s never enjoyed sleep so much as this.

His skin itches. He feels high.

He dreams of water. Water in odd places and at odd times. They’re sitting in 221B, feet warming together by the hearth, when water begins to rise all around them. It soaks through the carpet, douses the hot embers of the fire. Electrical sockets hiss and spit around the room. It shouldn’t be possible up here on the first floor of the building— Mrs Hudson’s rooms would be totally submerged. Half of London must be flooded, and he knows that’s impossible, but in the reality of his dream it seems perfectly normal.

Sitting across from him in his favourite chair, John frowns down at his soggy feet and says, “Are you running a bath? I think you left the taps on.”

And somewhere outside his dream he can hear that same voice saying, “They don’t know if,” and “I’ll call you when,” and “He might never.”

Time passes.

He’s standing on the MV Aurora cruise ship, wearing his heavy Belstaff, soaked through with seawater. Above him, a series of old, battered lifeboats sway precariously on their rusted hooks. He’s scrabbling at the handrail, trying to throw himself over it, but his feet are bolted to the deck and his voice won’t make a sound. John is in the water, glowing bright as a firefly in a jar. A burly voice with a thick Russian accent whispers in his ear, “You’re too late. He’s dead already, _pidoraz inorodniy,”_ and his pulse races, fear and adrenaline surging through his veins.

“John…”

Something warm and comforting closes around his hand, calming him. He looks down at the handrail and sees only his own hand there.

“Sherlock?”

It’s John’s voice, so close that his stomach turns over with joy. But John is dead. His body floats miles away now, a mere speck on the horizon that he can somehow still see. He opens his mouth to yell, but only a dry whimper crawls from his throat. When he blinks, the handrail is gone. He’s not on the deck anymore. Everything is dark.

“Sherlock, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

_Why,_ he wants to ask, but he can’t help his curiosity. The hand over his is firm, but its texture is oddly rough. It isn’t skin that he feels, but something closer to cloth, or gauze. Scratchy, like whatever is wrapped tightly around his stomach, constricting his muscles. But the shape of this hand over his is familiar somehow, as if he’s observed it from afar so many times that he could recognise it locked in an iron box if it were to rattle a certain way.

This hand— he’s catalogued its every contour, every crease, every line. He knows it like he knows his own.

“Please. Give me something…”

_John._

The air takes on the quality of his breath and Sherlock breathes it in, revelling in the fresh data; tea, toast, mint. If he had the ability to, he would be smiling right now. Just from this he understands that it must be morning. John’s had breakfast and his coffee was made extra strong today. It isn’t the brand they use at home, so they must be somewhere else— a hospital, most likely. Their beverages are usually terrible.

And hospital means that he’s alive. John is mobile enough to be at his bedside, which is another good sign. The only unknown that remains is what happened to his hands.

The mystery of it piques his curiosity enough that he wills his fingers to move. They twitch, then curl in on themselves, weakly grasping the hand that covers them, and that voice — _John’s voice_ — makes a choked, happy sound.


	15. Chapter 15

One hour and forty-five minutes after that first sign, Sherlock is awake.

John doesn’t notice at first. He’s been waiting, unwilling to leave the room for more than a minute in case Sherlock regained consciousness and found himself alone in an unfamiliar place. Sat on a chair by the door, he almost drops his book when a series of beeps shatters the room’s calm.

His initial reaction is panic. He flies to his feet, knocking the book to the floor anyway, but stops dead when he sees the source of the noise. Sherlock’s pale arm is outstretched, his hand fiddling with the controls of his morphine drip. Then his head rolls on its pillow to face him, one tired eye cracked open.

“What happened to your hands?”

The sound of his voice is a symphony to John’s ears. “Oh, thank God,” he whispers, shuffling closer to cup Sherlock’s warm cheek with his hand. He’s grinning like a fool, but he doesn’t care; he feels like the happiest sod on Earth just to see Sherlock’s eyes following him, awake, alive. Sherlock takes his hand and holds it there, a simple gesture that conveys his permission and understanding and affection while his eyes sparkle with even more emotions all vying at once to be expressed.

After a delay that should by all rights embarrass him, John’s medical training kicks back in and he remembers that it’s a good idea to run a few checks on someone who has just emerged from a coma. Still, he can’t help but feel reluctant to untangle his hand from Sherlock’s, burying his excitement beneath something resembling a professional veneer as he sets about checking vitals and responses.

“Are you in pain?” he asks, testing Sherlock’s pupil response with a penlight. “I can call someone to unlock the settings if it’s not enough.”

“I was turning it down,” Sherlock explains, his voice sleep-thick and a little slow from the opiates lingering in his blood. “The pain is manageable.”

John would argue that he should keep it below merely ‘manageable’, if he wasn’t privy to Sherlock’s sketchy history with drugs. He can’t fault him for being cautious. But it says a hell of a lot about his character that he wouldn’t use the opportunity as an excuse to chase that old, nostalgic high. Though Sherlock’s commendable willpower makes John exceedingly proud, he decides not to comment on it. He continues his diagnostics, using a toothpick pressed against the sole of Sherlock’s feet, which twitch away at the unpleasant sensation.

The initial signs are encouraging; he appears fully conscious and reports no numbness in his extremities. So far so good. The hospital doctors will undoubtedly want to run a battery of cognitive tests later on to check his brain function, but for now, John is well satisfied that Sherlock is awake and able to speak.

Having exhausted the doctorly things he can do, John glances around and spots a jug of water. He pours a fresh cup. “Want something to drink?”

“Please.”

John holds the cup to his mouth, feeding him the straw. After a couple of light sips, the straw slips out of his mouth and he relaxes his head back into the pillow, a faint smile creeping onto his face. “Relax, John.”

“I’m not sure I can,” he admits. “I’ve felt so bloody useless these past few days. You have no idea how happy I am to see you awake. You could ask me for pretty much anything right now and I’d do it.”

“Your hands,” he prompts, his eyes flicking down. “I want to know what happened.”

“What, this?” John holds them up in display. “That’s what you’ve been dying to know first?”

“What else is there?”

“Well…” He can think of a whole host of questions Sherlock might’ve had if— _when_ he woke up. About the case, about Mikhail and his hitherto unknown wife, _Miranda_ (“Mindy”) Petrov. Or about his condition, the status of his kidney, his brush with death. Anything. As an issue of priority, the state of John’s hands shouldn’t even rank in the top five by his reckoning.

Does Sherlock not remember why he’s here, or simply not care? Neither sit well with what John knows of him. Then again, it’s possible that not all systems are back on-line yet, so to speak.

“Maybe you should get some sleep first, yeah?” he says, wary of pushing him too hard, too soon. “I can come back later, give you a bit of privacy. I’ve been hovering over you for days.”

A crease forms between his eyes. “No. Stay, please.”

The way he says it gives John pause. He drags his chair over to the bed. “Okay. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

The worry melts from Sherlock’s pallid face, and John is privately glad. He doesn’t know what he would do with himself otherwise; there’s nowhere else he’d rather be but here, supporting and taking care of him. In only three short days he’d grown to miss Sherlock’s deep voice, the spark of life in his eyes, the flourish of his coat as he made a dramatic exit from a room in his unmistakable style. John drinks up every word, every glance, every movement like a thirsty man crawling out of the desert and back into civilisation.

“I have a feeling I’ve slept way past my usual quota,” Sherlock comments, turning his head to squint at the monitors by his bed. Wit, curiosity; little by little, his personality is already making itself known.

“Just a bit,” John replies, smiling. He pulls out his phone, a temporary replacement in lieu of the one he’d lost on the Aurora. Mycroft will want to know his brother is awake. Sherlock watches him peck laboriously at the screen for several minutes while he sends his text.

“John, please don’t make me ask again.”

He glances up. “Well I could spoil it for you, if you really want. But you’re going to be stuck here for a while. There’s only so many crossword books I can pinch for you from the waiting rooms.”

The threat of impending boredom seems to do the trick. “Let me see them, then.”

After sending his text, John allows the careful examination of his bandaged hands. He watches silently as Sherlock turns them in his palms, the warmth and pressure of his touch seeping through the cotton. It takes him far longer than usual to finish gathering the data he requires, such that John could swear after the first few minutes they were simply holding hands for the sake of doing so. Experimentally, he smooths his thumbs along Sherlock’s bare palms. Moments later, Sherlock’s slender violinist fingers reach up to stroke back and forth over his wrists.

“You weren’t injured on the ship,” Sherlock remarks.

“Not my hands, no. Did get a broken nose, but I’ve had it set.” John tilts his face this way and that. “Not too noticeable, is it?”

“I notice it.” The corners of his lips tug upward, marking John’s disappointed expression. “But it’s my job to notice such details. Not to worry, it hasn’t marred your good looks.”

John chuckles, embarrassed, but warmed by the unexpected compliment. He can’t be certain if he’s ever heard Sherlock call him ‘good looking’ before. He lets it roll around in his mind and decides that he doesn’t feel weird about it. Quite the contrary; he likes it. Judging by the heat in his cheeks, it probably even made him blush.

Sherlock’s eyes narrow in thought, returning to the case of the mysterious injury. “It must have happened some time after our stint in the sea, from the time we were rescued to you being here in the hospital. Judging by how they’re wrapped, I would say burns of some kind. Probably second degree. Any less and they wouldn’t look like that. Anything worse, and you’d not let me touch them at all.”

John hums, letting a pleased smile grow across his face. It’s such a joy to watch his fantastic mind work. Only someone so brilliant could spend three days in a coma and then not an hour after waking up go straight back into dazzling him with his observations. Without thinking, he places one hand by Sherlock’s head and lets the naked tips of his fingers stroke through his dark curls.

Sherlock’s eyes flutter closed. “John, I… had a dream. Except now I think about it, it might’ve been real.”

“Oh?”

“Those are electrical burns, are they not?”

John beams at him. “You are amazing. Yes. How did you know?”

“I heard someone say I was in VT,” he explains.

“Yeah. They gave up, figured it had been too long. I wasn’t going to let them make that decision. I, ah, was still a bit wet at the time, though.”

His brow tightens. “John, you could have killed yourself. Why would you risk your life to save me?”

John shrugs. “Told you I would.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I believe your exact words were, ‘I’d live.’”

“I did live,” John replies. “We both did. And here we are.”

“Here we are,” he affirms, his voice thin and falling silent as the weight of it sinks in. John spends long minutes carding his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, idly wondering if the nurses would let him wash it one of these days.

“What happened, then, when the ship docked?” Sherlock asks, sounding relaxed and sleepy. That’s more like it, John thinks, but it’s probably best they wait and discuss this later.

“I’ll tell you soon. Rest now, Sherlock. I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard. You still have a surgery to get through.”

Sherlock rests.

John uses the opportunity to stretch his legs a bit. After letting the nurses know about Sherlock’s condition, he takes a walk outside, enjoying the fresh air that isn’t laced with the clinical smells of antiseptic and lemon cleaner. He finds a bench and sits by himself, letting the breeze cool his face as he watches the cars come and go along the busy streets, a familiar ache flaring to life at the back of his mind.

He’s had a lot of time to think these past few days. About himself. About Sherlock. About all manner of little things he’d apparently missed before, all the little signs and signals that passed him by unnoticed, either because he was blind to them or he just didn’t want to acknowledge their existence. As he stood day and night like a guardian by Sherlock’s bedside, it occurred to him there was still so much he needed to say. Things he could say now, if only he could put into words this thing that is so desperately unspoken between them. Perhaps it’s worth a try now, but the prospect of opening that Pandora’s box is still daunting, and the last thing he wants to do is put any extra unnecessary stress on Sherlock while he’s recovering.

But God, his mind is a mess.

He can’t stop thinking about all the times they’ve stood in the hallway of their flat and shared a long, burning look, breathless as they came down from the adrenaline of a case. It was almost like they were waiting for something to happen next, or for one of them to make a move and… do what, exactly? He always tried so hard not to think about it. He used to pretend it was his imagination, just his brain playing tricks — intrusive thoughts, the call of the void, whatever you’d call it — but there was a part of him that dared to believe it could be real, and he was afraid of its potential, as if that gap between them could close so effortlessly if only one of them was brave enough to take initiative.

What terrified him most of all was knowing he would allow it. If Sherlock took it upon himself to make the first move, John would follow unquestioningly, and doesn’t that sound just like him? Except, in this particular area, it went against everything he thought he knew about himself. Finally he had to admit, privately at least, that it is something he might actually want. There’s something there, some spark that he’s expended so much energy to deny in the past. After what they’ve both been through, he doesn’t think he can deny it much longer.

But what they already have is so wonderful, better than he’d ever hoped for, that he would be an idiot to jeopardise it for what might simply turn out to be misplaced feelings of chivalry. For God’s sake, he’d nearly lost him. Sherlock nearly _died_. And Sherlock…

_Don’t you realise you’re my whole bloody world?_

His remembers the shock he felt when the words slipped out. He hadn’t meant to lay it out there in such stark terms, but it’s no lie. He wonders if Sherlock remembers it? And if he does, could he feel the same…?

Heading back inside, John makes a decision.


	16. Chapter 16

The day passes swiftly. Nine o’clock rolls around, and after the doctors and nurses have finished another battery of tests and checks, John once again finds himself sitting by Sherlock’s bedside. Sherlock is awake and alert, but unable to move much on account of his wound, so John makes sure he’s comfortable, fetching him drinks and pulling the blinds closed when the sky outside gets dark.

Then for long, quiet minutes they simply look at each other. John is transfixed by the colour in his eyes, so bright now compared to the dull greyness they had faded to before. Sherlock returns his gaze with an unreadable expression. He’s probably trying to get a read on John’s sudden nervous energy.

John can’t blame him. From his clipped sentences to the way his hands clench and release in his lap, it wouldn’t take the world’s only Consulting Detective to see that he’s working up the courage for something. If he’s going to say it, now is the time to do so, when everything is quiet and there are no distractions and he’s feeling uncharacteristically open and expressive. They’ve been given a second chance to lay their cards on the table; for once in his life, John is going to be honest with himself.

“Sherlock, there’s something—”

“I’ve been thinking—”

They pause. “Sorry,” Sherlock says. “Go ahead.”

“No, you first.” John forces a smile, the knot of anxiety in his stomach tightening.

“I’m not very good at this sort of thing,” Sherlock admits, his eyes fixed on John’s bandages. “But there’s something I feel you deserve to hear. This experience has put certain things into perspective for me.”

 _Me too_ , John thinks.

“I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of dying without having let you know how much I’ve appreciated your companionship these past few years. You’ve become incredibly important to me, and I believe you have a tendency to undervalue your worth. But that is, admittedly, partially my fault.”

His pulse quickens, his heart seeming to know where this is going even as his brain struggles to catch up. He brushes it off with a laugh. “I know. Not a bad life, is it? Having your own personal assistant, tea-brewer, housemaid and live-in blogger. I’m irreplaceable.”

He means it as a joke, mostly, but Sherlock’s eyes pinch and his voice chokes. “Oh, John. Please forgive me for how I’ve treated you.”

He’s taken aback by the stark humility. “Sherlock…”

“I know I’m not a very good friend. I don’t try to be an arse, it’s just who I am, and you have the patience of a saint to put up with me. I don’t deserve you.”

He doesn’t understand. Where is this coming from? “Hey, now. You silly sod, there’s nothing to forgive. None of that matters now. All I care about is you getting better.”

“No, you don’t understand,” he says. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you for a long time. I have to tell you now, or I might not be able to later. But you’re going to hate me for it.”

John’s wills his fluttering heart to be calm. “What do you mean?”

Sherlock chews his lip, his eyes full of emotion, and it doesn’t matter what he’ll say; John will always forgive him. How could he not? Sherlock’s mistakes may often be dramatic, even perilous. But to err is human, and under a strange kind of logic that makes him the most _human_ human being John has ever known.

“Whatever it is, I won’t hate you for it. I promise you that.”

He takes a shaky breath and closes his eyes, as if he can’t bare to see John’s reaction. “I am so sorry if this means the end of our friendship, John, but I fell in love with you the first day we met and it only got worse from there.”

It takes a moment for the words to register.

And then so many pieces click into place at once. It’s like the cypher to all the coded messages Sherlock has been subconsciously sending him over the years. The reason he never showed any interest in romantic involvement is the same reason he criticised every one of John’s dates: He was in love with him. He was jealous. He was _pining_.

For three years.

_Oh, God._

“You… love me?” John asks, stupidly, because he still can’t quite believe those words coming from Sherlock’s mouth, even though nothing else in the world makes as much sense as this. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I couldn’t,” he whispers. “I was selfish. I didn’t want you to leave.”

“You think I would have left?”

A short, miserable laugh escapes him. “Of course you will. You’ll try to accept it for the sake of our friendship, but inevitably things will get awkward. You’ll grow increasingly uncomfortable at home. You might even feel guilty for something neither of us can change. I never would have admitted this before, but after how it all nearly ended… I couldn’t go on pretending. I know you could never feel the same, and I— You wouldn’t want—”

His voice breaks. The sound of it shatters something inside John, and he slides out of his chair, mind and body on auto-pilot. “Christ, Sherlock…”

He has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s not going to stop it. His mind blanks as he leans over, bringing himself close enough that he can feel Sherlock’s breath quickening against his lips. Sherlock’s eyes fly open, pained and pleading, locking to his as if terrified he would never set eyes on him again. John brings his hands to cradle Sherlock’s head between them.

Sherlock presses into the touch, a plaintive whisper escaping him. “ _John_ …”

The memory of Sherlock’s words float back to him: _I fell in love with you the first day we met_. But this time he hears it in his own inner voice and it rings with startling truth. The pieces begin to settle into place, an answer solidifying into purpose, into motion, and before he knows what he’s doing he tilts Sherlock’s face to his and boldly presses a kiss to his lips.

Sherlock gasps, tensing beneath his touch, and John’s hands are shaking but he knows he doesn’t want to pull away. God, he knows that now. The scratchy texture of Sherlock’s stubble against his chin is an entirely new sensation to him — unabashedly masculine — and if he was worried at all that it would feel weird, he needn’t have been. John is soaring. He feels exhilarated, his pulse racing, warmth spreading through the very core of him.

But now that this is really happening, he feels at a loss how to proceed. Sherlock hasn’t moved except to grip his sheets, as if he expects the ground to give way to a sinkhole any second. Maybe this isn’t what he wanted at all. Perhaps the whole idea of expressing himself in this way is so alien, so unpractised, that he’s as lost as John feels. Sherlock’s thoughts are difficult enough to read at the best of times, but it’s impossible to tell what’s going on inside his head as John retreats just enough to look into his face.

His voice comes out on a low rasp. “Okay?”

Sherlock looks at him through darkened, wide-blown pupils, and nods slightly. “Yes, I just thought you didn’t… I didn’t dare hope that you would…”

It’s all that he needs. Emboldened by his obvious approval, John puts to silence any further hesitation from either of them and kisses him again, properly this time, fiercely even, putting all the weight of his love and adoration behind it. And Sherlock’s response is beautiful and thrilling, a high noise like a whine in the back of his throat as his muscles finally come unlocked like the turning of a key. He curls his arms possessively around the back of John’s neck, hungrily drawing him closer, and John could almost shudder at the force of so many years of repressed emotions bubbling to the surface all at once.

Sherlock’s breath is foul from his long sleep, and John doesn’t care. This is still sweeter than anything he’d dared dream. His face is wet again, fresh tears smearing against their cheeks, somehow even finding their way onto his tongue, turning their kisses tangy with salt. And John’s heart is full to bursting.

He smiles against Sherlock’s lips. “I love you too, you amazing, incredible, utterly mad—”

The sound of the door latch rattling open sends John bolt upright where he stands. Someone enters the room behind him, and judging by how quickly the affection melts from Sherlock’s face, he has a pretty decent idea who it might be. Biting back a curse, John hastens to compose himself before turning to their untimely intruder.

“Oh, good,” Sherlock says without a hint of sincerity, “I was wondering when I would be getting a visit from the Queen.”

Mycroft, looking more well-put together now than John has seen in the past few days, leans casually on his umbrella. “So glad to see you awake at last, little brother. I trust you had a pleasant sleep?”

If looks could kill, John would have to avert his eyes. “Mycroft, ever heard of knocking before you enter a room?”

“Whatever for? This is a hospital ward, not a _bordello,_ ” he replies, and John can’t be entirely sure whether his interruption was accidental or a deliberately calculated move. Probably the latter. Either way he seems aware of having interrupted _something_ important, and is looking entirely too smug about it. He casually raises the tip of his umbrella to peer at its metal point in false interest.

John is about to make up some excuse to order him out when Sherlock pipes up. “It’s fine. Mycroft is just protective of his assets. God forbid he should need to hire somebody else to do his legwork.”

John’s head whips around. “What do you mean, ‘his legwork’?”

Mycroft glares at Sherlock, who is too busy wiping his face dry to retaliate. Apparently this was something John was never meant to hear.

“We have been after this Petrov fellow for quite a number of years,” Mycroft explains. “We could not allow this opportunity to slip through our fingers.”

John is stunned by the revelation. “That’s what all this was for? Whatever happened to ‘I can’t abide loose ends’, Sherlock? You said—”

“I meant what I said. I wanted Mikhail caught by any means necessary, and by _happy_ coincidence Mycroft needed someone who could identify him quickly and accurately in a crowd. We both agreed his own agents would have been useless.”

John throws up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t believe this. No, wait, I’m talking to the Holmes siblings; I _completely_ believe this.”

“If it makes any difference, my brother did not take much in the way of convincing,” Mycroft adds, as if anything he says could possibly absolve him of his part of the blame. “I merely provided an additional incentive.”

“Hm, by threatening to pre-invite me to the next five family get-togethers. It was effective, I grant you.”

John doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but it’s tempting to do both. He paces the room, frustration oozing out of his pores like sweat.

“So I assume the failsafe worked?” Sherlock asks. “You wouldn’t be standing there looking so disgustingly chipper otherwise.”

“Nor would you be here at all, brother mine,” Mycroft replies, shooting him an almost sickly sweet smile. “Indeed, our satellite received the signal transmitted by John’s phone and a relief team was waiting at the dock in Marseille. When it became apparent neither of you were still on-board, a rescue helicopter was sent to scout the vicinity of your last known location. It seems you were pulled out of the water just in time. I think we can call the operation a success overall, don’t you?”

Sherlock huffs. “Yes, thank you ever so much for the rescue, dear brother, the likes of which never would have been necessary in the first place had your brain-dead software developers had the common sense to program their apps to be _silent_.”

“No need to be catty, William,” Mycroft scolds, and John has had enough of this. Before he can react, John snatches the umbrella out of Mycroft’s hands, opens the window, and tosses it out. Then he stares down the room as, three floors below, they hear the wooden handle clatter onto the pavement. “All done?”

Sherlock wears a look of complete awe. “I think,” he says, slowly, “that was the best thing I’ve ever seen anybody do, ever.”

“Doctor Watson, you— That— How dare you?” Mycroft squeaks, clearly unaccustomed to being stood up to. “That umbrella is not just— It contains sensitive government data, which I—”

“Then you’d better go get it then, hadn’t you?” John remarks, squaring his feet and crossing his arms. He won’t be intimidated. Not by him. Not even if Sherlock wasn’t lying there watching the whole thing unfold with a heated look in his eyes that sends sparks up and down John’s spine. Red-faced and fuming, Mycroft glances back and forth between them at a loss for words, and John feels the tiniest glimmer of pride at having momentarily broken his brain.

Finally he turns and storms through the door, but not without a parting shot. “If my brother is ever in need of another organ, I’ll be certain they find a way to accept _your_ generous donation.”

The door slams shut.

John lets the air rush out of his lungs.

“I think I may need to hire you a bodyguard,” Sherlock says.

“Yeah, well. Nobody talks to my boyfriend like that.”

He freezes. “Boyfriend?”

John seats himself on the edge of the bed. “I ‘spose it does sound a bit teen,” he muses. He puts his hand back in Sherlock’s hair, almost for the simple fact that this is something he can do freely now, without the lingering sense that it’s overstepping some invisible boundary. But mostly because when he does, Sherlock presses into the touch like a cat being stroked. “What would be better, then? Husband?”

It slips out before his brain has a chance to parse the subtext, but Sherlock’s wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights reaction makes it utterly worthwhile. He has to laugh. That makes _two_ brains he’s broken in as many minutes.

"I… Are you…?"

“That wasn’t a proposal,” he assures. “Not yet, at least. We should probably at least go on a date first.”

Sherlock tangles their fingers together. "Angelo's," he says, his eyes sparkling. "Ask me again there."

 

*******

 

The results of Sherlock’s cognitive tests give him the all-clear. It looks like he may not have suffered any long-term effects from his ordeal, though his thirst since awakening has been insatiable. He spends two more days recovering in bed until he is declared well enough for surgery. John wishes him luck, and they part with a tender kiss.

Three hours later, the transplant is a success. Sherlock and his new kidney are carted back to his room to wake from anaesthesia. The replacement should last a decade at least, assuming his body doesn't reject the organ, and in the meantime he should make a full recovery. When Sherlock wakes, he looks happy; happier than John has ever seen him. John can barely contain his relief. He sits by Sherlock’s bedside all day texting everybody in his phonebook, the heels of his feet bouncing restlessly.

“Are you ever going to stop smiling?” Sherlock asks him, half-dozing as he watches John peck away at his screen.

“Don’t think so,” John replies, because he honestly doesn’t think he could if he tried. His phone pings. “Oop, got another one. Let’s see who… Oh, Greg sends his congrats. Says he’s got a possible nine for you when you’re feeling up to it.”

“Your face will get stuck that way,” Sherlock comments.

John shrugs. “Doesn’t sound like a problem to me,” he says, grinning. The corners of Sherlock’s mouth turn up.

“No,” he agrees. “I plan to do whatever it takes to ensure you have sufficient cause to smile like that every day from now on.”

His cheeks flush. His mouth couldn’t pull any wider, but it certainly tries. “You just keep on being you. Trust me, this won’t be going away anytime soon.”

“Good.”

“You know what else?” he asks, tucking his phone away for the moment.

“Hm?”

“I think I want to start taking swimming lessons.”

His eyebrows climb up his forehead. “But… Are you not afraid to, after…”

“’Course,” John says. “But I don’t want to be. And I don’t ever want to feel as helpless as I did in the water that day. I want to conquer it. What you did at the pool— Well, I won’t say it helped at the time, but it did force me to recognise the problem. Ella’s always saying I should find ways to turn my weaknesses into strengths; this seems like a perfect way to do just that.”

Sherlock’s smile deflates, and John knows what he’s going to ask before he even finds the words. “What happened? What made you afraid?”

He presses his lips into a thin line. He’s been expecting this, if not at all looking forward to it. It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell him, but those are memories he’d rather not dredge up again. Not here, not like this.

“Someday,” he compromises, and Sherlock nods his understanding.

“Only if you want to.”

 

*******

 

On the day of Sherlock’s release from the hospital, Mycroft sends a private car to take them back home to Baker Street.

Waiting for them on the back seat is a pair of brand new phones, replacements for the ones they lost on the Aurora. John supposes it’s Mycroft’s way of apologising, though Sherlock just rolls his eyes and suggests tossing them out the window. It’s been his favourite suggestion for any and all Mycroft-related issues since John’s surprising action in the hospital.

In the end, and at John’s insistence, they decide to leave the phones in the car; a polite but firm rejection. After all that happened, they feel eager to take the reigns of life and regain some of the control that was lost. A new chapter is upon them; it starts as soon as their flat door swings closed and Sherlock crowds John against the wall, needy and impatient to begin.

And when John takes the lead, he follows.

 


	17. Chapter 17

_Four months later_

 

Sherlock peers over the edge. “I have a confession to make,” he says, dizzied by a sudden sense of vertigo.

The water sits calm and undisturbed sixteen feet beneath the pool’s smallest diving platform. John glances across at him. “What’s that?”

He swallows heavily. “I’ve never actually done this before.”

“Scared?” John asks.

“A bit.”

John’s blue eyes shine with trust and confidence. “Shall we do it together, then?” He reaches out and takes Sherlock’s hand, his thumb smoothing along the backs of his fingers, warm and loving.

Sherlock adores him.

“Together,” he agrees, and together they let gravity do the rest.


End file.
